# Date: 1894

24929, 2Ш0, 24931.

ANNOTATIONS ON *CAPITAL* BY K. MARX[^1]
1888–1894

THE GERMAN EDITION OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF *CAPITAL*[^2]

*Capital* by K. Marx. Volume One. Book 1:
The Process of Production of Capital. Hamburg, 1872[^3]
[Not earlier than end of 1888]

[86] * ...Only analysis of commodity prices led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and only the universal monetary expression of commodities made it possible to fix their character as values. But precisely this completed form of the commodity world — its monetary form — conceals behind things the social character of private labors, and consequently the social relations of private laborers, instead of revealing these relations in their purity. When I say: coats, boots, and so forth relate to linen as the universal embodiment of abstract human labor, then the absurdity of this expression strikes the eye. But when the producers of coats, boots, and so forth put these commodities in relation to linen, or — which does not alter the matter — to gold and silver as the universal equivalent, then the relation of their private labors to the aggregate social labor appears to them precisely in this absurd form.

Such forms, in fact, constitute the categories of bourgeois political economy. These are socially significant, and therefore objective forms of thought for the production relations of a historically determined mode of production — commodity production. Therefore, all the mysticism of the commodity world, all the wonders and specters enveloping the products of labor under the dominance of commodity production — all this vanishes instantaneously as soon as we transition to other forms of production.

[150] ... [^102]
[263] ... [^86]

[334] Incidentally, within certain limits a certain modification occurs here. Labor embodied in value is labor of average social quality, that is, the manifestation of average labor-power.

[347] In the simple form considered above, cooperation coincides with production on a large scale, but it does not form any durable, characteristic form peculiar to a special epoch in the development of capitalist production. At most, it appears in approximately such a form in the craft-like beginnings of manufacture[^25] and in that form of large-scale agriculture which corresponds to the manufacturing period, differing essentially from peasant economy only in the mass of workers employed simultaneously and the scale of concentrated means of production[^7].

[^102]: "The aggregate of sales or contracts concluded during the course of a given day will not affect the quantity of money circulating on precisely that day, but in the vast majority of cases will express itself in a whole series of the most heterogeneous obligations for sums of money which can only enter circulation in subsequent, more or less distant periods... Bills of exchange or credits granted today need not at all bear any resemblance in quantity, in the general sum or duration of periods to the credit transactions that will be concluded tomorrow or the day after; moreover, many of the bills issued today and credits granted today will coincide in their payment dates with many obligations whose conclusion dates back to a series of preceding, completely indefinite dates; bills for 12, 6, 3 months, and 1 month often coincide with one another and thus increase the total sum of obligations whose maturity falls on one and the same day" (*The Currency Theory Reviewed; in a Letter to the Scottish People*. By a Banker in England. Edinburgh, 1845, p. 29, 30 passim[^3]).

See Addition at the end*.

[^25]: "Is not the union of art, industry, and emulation of many in the same work a way to push it forward? And could England by any other means have brought its woolen manufacture to such high perfection?" (Berkeley. *The Querist*. London, 1750, p. 56, § 521)[^6].

p. 806[^4]

See supplement at the end.

[348] Cooperation based on division of labor acquires its classical form in manufacture. As the characteristic form of capitalist production process, it dominates throughout the manufacturing period proper, that is, approximately from the middle of the sixteenth century to the last third of the eighteenth.

Manufacture arises in two ways.

In the first case, workers of heterogeneous independent crafts are united in one workshop under the command of a single capitalist, through whose hands the product must successively pass until it is finally completed. For example, a carriage was originally the common product of the labors of a great number of independent craftsmen: the wagon-maker, the saddle-maker, the tailor, the locksmith, the coppersmith, the turner, the trimmer, the glazier, the painter, the varnisher, the gilder, and so forth. The coach manufacture combines all these various craftsmen in one workshop, where they work simultaneously and in interaction with one another.

[349–350] But manufacture arises also by an opposite path. Many craftsmen performing the same or similar work, for example papermakers, type-founders, or needle-makers, are united by one capitalist in a common workshop. This is cooperation in its simplest form. Each of these craftsmen (perhaps with one or two apprentices) manufactures the entire commodity, that is, performs successively the various operations necessary for its production. His labor retains its old craft character. However, external circumstances soon compel a different use of the concentration of workers in one space and the simultaneousness of their labor. For instance, a large quantity of finished goods must be delivered within a specified time. Labor is therefore divided. Instead of entrusting one and the same craftsman with the successive performance of different operations, these operations are separated from one another, isolated, arranged in space one beside the other, with each entrusted to a separate craftsman, and all executed simultaneously by workers cooperating with one another. This casual division of labor repeats itself, reveals its inherent advantages, and gradually crystallizes into systematic division of labor. From the individual product of an independent craftsman performing many operations, the commodity transforms into the social product of an association of craftsmen, each of whom performs continuously only one and the same partial operation.

[350] Therefore, on one hand, manufacture introduces division of labor into the production process or develops it further; on the other hand, it combines crafts that were formerly independent. But whatever its point of departure in any particular case, its final form is always the same: a production mechanism whose organs are human beings.

For proper understanding of division of labor within manufacture, it is essential to pay attention to the following points. First, the decomposition of the production process into its particular phases coincides completely in this case with the decomposition of craft activity into its various partial operations. Whether each operation is complex or simple, its execution in any case retains its craft character and consequently depends on the strength, dexterity, speed, and confidence of each individual worker, on his skill in handling his instrument. The craft remains the basis.

[351] Manufacture, reproducing within the workshop and systematically developing to the utmost limit the traditional separation of crafts which it finds in society, thereby creates the virtuosity of partial workers.

[355–356] Only a few parts of the watch pass through several hands, and all these *membra disjecta* [scattered members][^8] are concentrated in one pair of hands only when they are to unite into one mechanical whole. This purely external relation of the finished product to its heterogeneous component parts makes here, as in other similar productions, the union of partial workers in one workshop accidental. Partial operations, in turn, can be performed as separate independent crafts, which is the case in the cantons of Vaud and Neuchâtel, whereas in Geneva, for example, large watch manufactures exist, that is, direct cooperation of partial workers under the management of a single capital takes place. But even in this latter case, dials, springs, and cases are rarely manufactured in the manufacture itself. Combined manufacturing production is here advantageous only in exceptional cases, because competition among workers laboring at home is especially great, and the splitting of production into a mass of heterogeneous processes almost precludes the combined employment of means of labor; whereas in production scattered in space the capitalist is freed from the costs of factory buildings and so forth[^32]. It should be noted, however, that the situation of these partial workers, who labor at home but not for themselves but for the capitalist (*Fabricant, établisseur*), is completely different from that of the independent craftsman working only for his own customers[^33][^9].

[300] In this case, various manufactures connected with one another form more or less spatially separated departments of one aggregate manufacture and at the same time independent production processes — each with its own division of labor. Despite certain advantages of combined manufacture, it does not achieve, on its own basis, genuine technical unity. This unity arises only with the transformation of manufacture into machine production.

[362] Thus manufacture develops a hierarchy of labor-forces to which there corresponds a scale of wages.

[363] Manufacture therefore creates in every craft it seizes a category of the so-called unskilled workers, who were strictly excluded by craft production.

[366] Territorial division of labor, fixing certain branches of production to certain districts of the country, receives a new impulse from manufacturing production, which exploits all manner of special characteristics[^55]. During the manufacturing period, rich material for division of labor within society is supplied by the expansion of the world market and the colonial system, which form part of the general conditions of existence of the manufacturing period[^].

[367] On the contrary, what characterizes division of labor in manufacture? The fact that here the partial worker does not produce the commodity[^58].

[371] In general and in the whole, the worker was attached to his means of production as closely as the snail to its shell, and consequently the first basis of manufacture was lacking: the separation of means of production as capital opposing the worker.

[373] Manufacture in the proper sense not only subjugates the previously independent worker to the command and discipline of capital, but moreover creates a hierarchical division of the workers themselves.

[376] The history of manufacture in the proper sense shows how the division of labor characteristic of it first acquires purposeful forms purely empirically, as it were behind the backs of the actors, and then, like craft guilds, strives through tradition to fix the form once found and in individual cases fixes it for whole centuries.

[377] Manufacturing division of labor, by decomposing craft activity, specializing tools of labor, forming partial workers, their grouping and combination into one aggregate mechanism, creates qualitative differentiation and quantitative proportionality of social production processes, that is, creates a definite organization of social labor and together with it develops a new, social productive force of labor. As a specifically capitalist form of social production process — and on the historical basis on which it arises, it can develop only in capitalist form — it is merely a particular method of producing relative surplus-value, or of intensifying the self-expansion of capital at the worker's expense, which is ordinarily called social wealth, "the wealth of nations," and so forth. It develops the social productive force of labor not for the worker but for the capitalist, and develops it by means of the degradation of the individual worker. It produces new conditions of domination of capital over labor. Therefore, if on one hand it is historical progress and a necessary moment in the economic development of society, then on the other hand it is an instrument of civilized and refined exploitation.

[380] Although the decomposition of craft activity reduces the costs of training and therefore the value of the worker, nevertheless for more difficult partial operations a lengthy apprenticeship remains necessary and is jealously guarded by workers even where it is unnecessary.

[381] ...Manufacture was incapable either of embracing social production in its full scope or of transforming it to its roots. It stood out as an architectural ornament on the economic building whose broad foundation was urban craft and rural subsidiary industries[^11].

[388] Only with the invention of Watt's second machine[^12], the so-called steam engine of double effect, was found the prime mover which, consuming coal and water, itself produces motive force and whose power is entirely under the control of man — a mover which is itself movable and is a means of locomotion, which, being urban rather than rural like the water-wheel, allows the concentration of production in cities instead of, as the water-wheel required, dispersing it in the countryside[^99]...

[^99]: "In the early period of textile manufactures the location of production depended on the availability of a river with a sufficient fall of water to turn a water-wheel; and although the construction of water factories was the beginning of the destruction of the domestic system of manufacture, nevertheless these factories... necessarily situated along rivers and often at considerable distances from one another, represented an element rather of the rural than of the urban system; and only with the introduction of steam power in place of water power do factories concentrate in cities and in places where water and coal necessary for steam production can be found in sufficient quantity. The steam engine —

N B

the mother of industrial cities" (A. Redgrave in *Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the 30th of April 1860*, p. 36)[^13].

[390] An American machine for making paper bags, exhibited at the London Industrial Exposition of 1862, cuts paper, coats it with paste, folds it, and produces 300 pieces per minute. The entire process which in manufacture is divided and executed in a definite sequence is here executed by a single working machine, which operates through the combination of various tools. Whether such a working machine is merely a mechanical reproduction of a complex craft tool or a combination of heterogeneous simple tools specialized by manufacture, at the factory, that is, in a workshop based on machine production...

[391] In those branches where the system of machines is first introduced, manufacture itself in general supplies for it the natural basis of division and consequently the organization of the production process[^101].

[^101]: Before the era of large-scale industry, the woolen manufacture was the dominant manufacture of England. Therefore most of the experiments in the first half of the eighteenth century were conducted on it. Experience acquired with wool benefited cotton, the mechanical treatment of which requires a less difficult preparatory process; just as later, conversely, mechanical woolen industry developed on the basis of mechanical cotton spinning and weaving. Individual elements of woolen manufacture, such as combing wool, have been embraced by the factory system only in recent decades. "The application of mechanical power to wool-combing... widely distributed since the introduction of the 'combing machine,' particularly Lister's machine... undoubtedly had the consequence that a very large number of people lost their jobs. Previously wool was combed by hand, mostly at home by the comber. Now it is ordinarily combed in the factory, and hand labor is displaced, except for certain special types of work where hand-combed wool is still preferred. Many of the hand-combers found work in the factories, but the product of the hand-comber is so small compared with the product of the machine that a very large number of combers remained without work" (*Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the 31st of October 1836*, p. 16[^14]).

[392–393] Paper production is well suited to studying in detail both the distinction between different modes of production based on different means of production and the connection of social production relations with different modes of production; ancient German paper-making provides an example of craft production, Holland in the seventeenth and France in the eighteenth century — an example of manufacture proper, and contemporary England — an example of automatic production in this branch; moreover, in China and India there still exist two different ancient Asiatic forms of this same industry...

Mule-spinners[^15], steam engines, and so forth appeared before the worker appeared whose exclusive occupation consists of producing steam engines, mule-spinners, and so forth; just as man wore clothing before tailors appeared. But the inventions of Vaucanson, Arkwright, Watt, and so forth could be realized only because these inventors found a considerable quantity of skilled mechanical workers already prepared by the manufacturing period. Part of these workers consisted of independent craftsmen of various professions, another part was united in manufactures, where, as mentioned earlier, particularly strict division of labor prevailed. With the increase in the number of inventions and the growing demand for newly invented machines, on one hand the division of machine-building into numerous independent branches developed further, on the other hand division of labor within machine-building manufactures. Thus we find here in manufacture the immediate technical basis of large-scale industry.

[395] But it was precisely the revolution in the mode of production of industry and agriculture that made necessary a revolution in the general conditions of the social production process, that is, in the means of communication and transport. The means of communication and transport of that society, the *pivot* [keystone], to use Fourier's expression[^16], of which were small agriculture with its ancillary domestic industry and urban craft, long ceased to satisfy the needs of production in the manufacturing period with its expanded division of social labor, its concentration of means of labor and workers, its colonial markets, and therefore actually underwent a revolution. In the same way, the means of transport and communication inherited from the manufacturing period soon became unbearable fetters for large-scale industry with its feverish pace and mass character of production, with its constant transfer of masses of capital and workers from one sphere of production to another, and with the world market connections it created.

[397] In simple cooperation and even in cooperation specialized as a result of division of labor, the displacement of the isolated worker by the socialized worker still appears more or less accidental. Machines, on the other hand, with certain exceptions to be mentioned later, function only in the hands of directly socialized or collective labor. Consequently, the cooperative character of the labor process becomes here a technical necessity dictated by the nature of the means of labor itself.

[430] Now we turn to the factory as a whole, and in its most developed form.

Dr. Ure, Pindar of the automatic factory[^17], describes it, on one hand, as

"the cooperation of various categories of workers, adults and minors, who with skill and diligence watch over the system of productive machines, continuously set in motion by a central force (prime mover)",

and on the other hand, as

"an enormous automaton, composed of numerous mechanical and conscious organs, acting in concert and without interruption for the production of one and the same object, so that all these organs are subject to one motive force, which sets itself in motion".

[431] Together with the working tool, the virtuosity of handling it passes from the worker to the machine. The capability of the tool is freed from the limitations that flow from the connection of human labor-power with the person of the worker. Thus the technical basis on which division of labor in manufacture rests is eliminated. Therefore, in place of the hierarchy of specialized workers characteristic of manufacture, on the automatic factory there appears a tendency toward equalization or leveling of the work which must be performed by the auxiliaries of the machine[^180], instead of the artificially created differences between partial workers the natural differences of age and sex acquire prevalence.

Insofar as division of labor is reborn on the automatic factory, it is first of all the distribution of workers among specialized machines and the distribution of masses of workers — not forming, however, distinct groups — among the various departments of the factory, where they work with homogeneous working machines positioned next to one another, that is, where they are united only by simple cooperation.

[434–435] The technical subjection of the worker to the uniform motion of the means of labor and the peculiar composition of the working body from individuals of both sexes and the most varied ages creates barrack discipline, which develops into a perfected factory regime and brings to full development the already mentioned labor of supervision, and along with it the division of workers into performers [*Handarbeiter*] and overseers of labor, into industrial rank-and-file and industrial non-commissioned officers.

[435] ... [^190]

[440] ...[^196]

[^180]: Ibid., p. 31[^18]. Cf. Karl Marx. *The Poverty of Philosophy*. Paris, 1847, p. 140, 141[^19].

[^190]: "The chains of slavery with which the bourgeoisie has shackled the proletariat nowhere appear so clearly as in the factory system. Here all freedom disappears legally and in fact. At half past five in the morning the worker must be at the factory. If he is late a few minutes, he faces a fine; if he is ten minutes late, he is not admitted until the breakfast break ends and loses wages for a quarter of a day... He must eat, drink, and sleep by command... The despotic bell tears him from sleep, from breakfast, from dinner. And what happens in the factory itself? Here the factory-owner is absolute legislator. He issues factory rules as he pleases; he alters and supplements his code as he wishes; and even if he puts complete nonsense into the code, the courts say to the worker: since you have voluntarily concluded this contract, you are obliged to fulfill it... These workers are condemned to live physically and spiritually under the stick from the age of nine until death" (F. Engels. *The Condition of the Working Class in England*. Leipzig, 1845, p. 217* and following).

* p. 120–121 Eng. trans[^20].

[^196]: On the contrary: "It is rarely that machines can be used with success to lessen the labor of an individual man; their construction would require more time than would be saved by their application. They can be used with real advantage only if they work on a large scale, if one machine can assist the labor of thousands. Accordingly they find their greatest application in the most populous countries, where there are more idle people. The use of machines is not brought about by a lack of people but by the ease with which it is possible to attract masses of people to work" (Piercy Ravenstone. *Thoughts on the Funding System and its Effects*. London, 1824, p. 45[^21]).

[455] Corresponding to the increase in the mass of raw materials, semi-finished goods, working tools, and so forth which machine production supplies with a relatively small number of workers, the processing of these raw materials and semi-finished goods is subdivided into numerous varieties, and therefore the diversity of branches of social production grows. Machine production carries the social division of labor incomparably further than manufacture because it increases incomparably more the productive force of the branches of industry it seizes.

The immediate result of the introduction of machines is that they increase surplus-value and together with it the mass of products in which it is embodied; consequently — they increase along with the substance consumed by the class of capitalists and its entourage the numbers of these social strata themselves.

[455–456] With the development of these world market relations, the demand for labor in the transport industry increases, and the latter splits into numerous new varieties[^222].

The increase in means of production and means of subsistence with the relative diminution of the number of workers gives an impetus to the extension of labor in those branches of production whose products, such as canals, docks, tunnels, bridges, and so forth, bear fruit only in the comparatively distant future. Directly on the basis of machine production or on the basis of the corresponding general industrial revolution, completely new branches of production are formed, and therefore new spheres of labor. However, their specific weight in total production cannot be considered significant even in the most developed countries. The number of workers employed in them increases as the need reproduces itself for the crudest manual labor.

[^222]: In 1861 in England and Wales, 94,665 seamen were employed in the merchant fleet.

NB

[458] Yes, political economy delights in that abominable theorem — abominable for every "philanthropist" who believes in the eternity and natural necessity of capitalist production — the theorem according to which even the factory, already based on machine production, after a certain period of growth, after the completion of a more or less prolonged "transition period," begins to torment a greater number of workers than it originally threw onto the street!

[459] In some empirically given cases, the increase in the number of workers employed in factories appears to be only apparent, that is, it is caused not by the expansion of factories already based on machine production but by the gradual incorporation into them of subsidiary branches. For example, the increase in the number of mechanical power-looms and the factory workers employed with them in the period 1838–1850 in (English) cotton production was caused simply by the expansion of this branch; on the contrary, in other factories it was owing to the application of steam power to looms, by means of which carpets, ribbons, canvas, and so forth are manufactured and which until that time were set in motion by human muscular force[^229]. Consequently, the increase in the number of these factory workers was simply an expression of the decrease in the total number of employed workers...

Nevertheless, it is clear that despite the mass of workers actually displaced or potentially replaced by machines, the number of factory workers as a result of the growth of machine production itself, which finds expression in the increase in the number of identical factories or in the increase in the size of already existing factories — can ultimately turn out to be greater than the number of displaced manufacturing workers or craftsmen. Suppose that the capital applied weekly, for example 500 pounds sterling, consisted under the old mode of production of 2/5 constant and 3/5 variable portion, that is, 200 pounds sterling was expended on means of production, 300 pounds sterling on labor-power, say at 1 pound sterling per worker. With the introduction of machines, the composition of the whole capital changes.

[460] The number of workers employed increased absolutely by 100, relatively, that is, compared with the magnitude of the whole capital advanced, it decreased by 800, because under the old way of conducting business capital of 2,000 pounds sterling would have employed not 400 but 1,200 workers. Consequently, relative decrease in the number of employed workers is compatible with its absolute increase. Above we assumed that with the growth of the whole capital its composition remained unchanged because the conditions of production did not change. But we already know that in reality with every step in the development of machine production the constant portion of capital, consisting of machines, raw materials, and so forth, increases, while the variable, expended on labor-power, decreases, and we know at the same time that in no other mode of production are improvements so constant, and therefore the composition of the whole capital is not changeable to the extent it is in machine production. But these constant changes are interrupted with equal constancy by pauses and purely quantitative expansion on a given technical basis. Therefore the number of employed workers increases. For example, the number of all workers in the cotton, woolen, worsted, linen, and silk factories of the United Kingdom constituted only 354,684 in 1835, whereas in 1861 the number of weavers alone (of both sexes and the most varied ages, beginning with 8-year-olds) at steam-looms constituted 230,654. Of course, this growth will appear less significant if we take into account that still in 1838 there were 800,000 hand cotton-weavers in England, including family members employed along with them[^230]; we say nothing of the hand weavers who were displaced in Asia and continental Europe.

[461] But when the factory reaches a certain spread and a definite degree of maturity, especially when its own technical basis, the machines, begins in turn to be produced by means of machines, when a revolution occurs both in the extraction of coal and iron and in the processing of metals and in transport, in short, when the general conditions of production corresponding to large-scale industry are established, then machine production acquires that elasticity, that capacity for rapid, jumping expansion, the limits of which are set only by raw materials and the market for sale. But machines, on one hand, directly lead to an increase in the quantity of raw material, as, for example, the cotton-gin increased cotton production[^231]. On the other hand, the cheapness of the machine product and the revolution in means of transport and communication serve as instruments for the conquest of foreign markets.

[462] This revolution stands in close connection with revolutions in agriculture, which we do not need to examine in greater detail here[^234].

[464] Consequently, the increase in the number of factory workers is conditioned by a relatively much more rapid growth of the whole capital invested in factories.

[472] The principle of machine production — to decompose the production process into its constituent phases and to resolve the arising tasks by means of mechanics, chemistry, and so forth, in short, natural sciences — everywhere becomes determining. Therefore machines penetrate into manufactures, where they find application now to one, now to another partial process.

[472–473] This so-called modern domestic industry has nothing in common with ancient domestic industry except the name, which presupposes independent urban craft, independent peasant economy, and above all the home of the working family. It has now transformed itself into an external department of the factory, manufacture, or commercial establishment. Besides factory workers, manufacturing workers, and craftsmen, whom capital concentrates spatially in large masses and whom it commands directly, by means of invisible threads it sets in motion a whole army of domestic workers, scattered in large cities and in the countryside. Example: the shirt factory of Messrs. Tillie in Londonderry, Ireland, with 1,000 factory workers and 9,000 domestic workers scattered in the countryside[^250].

The exploitation of cheap and immature labor-forces acquires in modern manufacture an even more shameless character than in the factory proper, because the technical basis of the latter — the replacement of muscular force by machines and the ease of labor — is for the most part absent in manufacture; besides, in manufacture the female organism or the not yet hardened organism of children is in the most unscrupulous manner subjected to the action of poisonous substances and so forth. In so-called work at home exploitation acquires an even more shameless character than in manufacture, because the capacity of workers to resist is diminished by their dispersal, because a whole series of parasites intervene between the actual employer and the worker, because work at home everywhere fights against machine or, at least, manufacturing production of the same branch, because poverty robs the worker of the most necessary conditions of labor — space, light, ventilation, and so forth — because the irregularity of employment grows, and finally, because in these last refuges for all those whom large-scale industry and agriculture have made "superfluous," competition among workers inevitably reaches its maximum.

[475] Regarding capitalist economy in the conditions of labor in modern manufacture (by which is here understood all large workshops except factories proper), the richest official material can be found in the fourth (1861) and sixth (1864) reports on the health of the population[^26].

[476] ... [^256]

[^250]: *Children's Employment Commission. 2nd Report*, p. LXVIII, № 415[^25].

[^256]: *Public Health. 6th Report*. London, 1864, p. 30[^27]. Dr. Simon notes that mortality among London tailors and printers aged 25–35 is actually much higher, since London employers receive from the countryside a large quantity of young people up to 30 years of age as "apprentices" and "*improvers*" (those wishing to improve themselves in their craft). Figuring in the censuses as Londoners, they artificially increase the number of persons on which mortality in London is calculated, while the number of deaths among them is comparatively smaller. A considerable part, especially in cases of serious illness, returns to the countryside (ibid.).

[476–477] Now I turn to so-called work at home. To form an idea of this sphere of exploitation which capital carries out in the back alleys of large-scale industry, and of the monstrosity of this exploitation, one could examine, for example, the externally thoroughly idyllic nail-making craft, which is pursued in certain remote villages of England[^257]. Here it will suffice to stop at a few examples of such branches as lace production and straw-plaiting, in which machines are not yet applied at all or which compete with machine and manufacturing production.

cf.

[477] *Lace finishing* is conducted in the form of work at home, either in the so-called "*mistresses houses*," or in private rooms of women who work alone or with their own children. The women who keep "*mistresses houses*" are themselves poor. The workshop forms part of their own quarters. They receive orders from factory owners, shop owners, and so forth, and hire women, girls, and small children in numbers corresponding to the size of their room and the fluctuations in demand in the given branch of industry.

[478] Where women work together with their own children at home, that is, in the modern sense in a room they rent, often on an attic, the situation is still worse, if it can be worse at all. This kind of work is distributed over 80 miles around Nottingham.

[479] The lace industry is spread chiefly in two agricultural districts of England — in the Honiton lace district, which covers a strip of 20–30 miles along the southern coast of Devonshire and separate places in North Devon, and in another district which covers a considerable part of the counties of Buckingham, Bedford, Northampton, and neighboring

NB

[^257]: Here we are speaking of forged nails as distinct from cut nails manufactured by machine. See *Children's Employment Commission. 3rd Report*, p. XI, XIX, № 125–130; p. 52, № 11; p. 113–114, № 487; p. 137, № 674[^28].

* — Final finishing of machine-made lace.


[Parts of Oxford and Huntingdonshire. Cottages of agricultural laborers ordinarily serve also as workshops. Some manufacturers employ more than 3,000 such homeworkers, predominantly children and adolescents, exclusively female.

[480] Wages generally miserable in the branches of industry just described (representing an exception, the maximum wage for children in straw-plaiting schools is 3 shillings), are lowered even further below their nominal magnitude owing to the truck system, which has become widespread particularly in lace-producing districts.

[482] The production of "wearing apparel" is carried on by manufactures which merely reproduce within themselves the division of labor, the *membra disjecta* [scattered members] of which they find already prepared; it is carried on by small craftsmen workshops which, however, no longer work for individual consumers as before, but for manufactures and shops, so that often entire towns and regions specialize in such branches of production, as, for example, shoemaking, etc.; finally, and above all, this production is carried on by the so-called homeworkers, who form the external departments of manufactures, shops, and even of relatively small workshops. Large quantities of objects of labor, raw materials, semi-finished products, etc., are supplied by large-scale industry; while the abundance of cheap human material (*taillable à merci et misericorde* [subject to arbitrary treatment and misery]) consists of those "released" by large-scale industry and agriculture. The manufactures of this sphere of production owe their emergence chiefly to the need of capitalists to have at hand a ready-made army which would correspond to every movement of demand. However, these manufactures permitted alongside themselves the further existence of fragmented craft production and home production as their broad foundation.

The enormous scale of surplus-value production in these branches of labor and simultaneously the increasing cheapening of the commodities they produce were conditioned and are conditioned chiefly by the minimum wages—sufficient only for miserable existence—and by that maximum length of working time which the human organism can barely endure.

[483] The era of machinery arrived. And the machine that played the decisive revolutionary role, the machine that equally embraced all the countless branches of this sphere of production, such as, for example, the production of fashionable goods, tailoring, shoemaking, sewing, hat-making and similar trades—was the sewing machine.

Its immediate effect on workers is approximately the same as that of all machines in general when they first seize new branches of production in the era of large-scale industry. The very youngest children are eliminated. The wages of machine workers rise compared with the wages of homeworkers, many of whom belong to the "poorest of the poor." The earnings of craftspeople in comparatively better condition, whom the machine begins to compete with, fall. The new machine workers are exclusively girls and young women. With the aid of mechanical force, they destroy the monopoly of male labor on heavier work and displace masses of old women and young children from the realm of lighter work. Very intense competition kills off the weakest workers performing manual labor. The alarming growth in cases of death from starvation in London during the last decade runs parallel with the spread of machine sewing.

[484] The revolution in the social mode of production, that necessary product of the transformation of means of production, takes place amidst a motley chaos of transitional forms. They change depending on the extent to which and for how long the sewing machine has already seized this or that branch of industry, depending on the position the workers were in before, depending on whether manufacture, craft, or home production predominated, depending on rent for workshop premises, etc. For example, in the production of fashionable goods, where labor was already organized mostly in the form of simple cooperation, the sewing machine initially forms only a new factor of manufacture production. In tailoring, shirt-making, shoemaking, etc., all forms intersect. Here—proper factory production. There—intermediaries receive raw materials from the principal capitalist and group 10–50 and more hired workers in "little rooms" and "attics" at sewing machines.... The diversity of transitional forms does not conceal, however, the tendency toward transformation into proper factory production. This tendency is nourished by: the very character of the sewing machine, the variety of ways of applying which drives toward the combination of previously divided branches of production under one roof, under the command of one capital; furthermore, by the circumstance that preliminary sewing and certain other operations are most appropriately performed where the machine is located; finally, by the inevitable expropriation of craftspeople and homeworkers who operate with their own machines.

[485] Overproduction of sewing machines themselves drives producers needing sales to rent them out by the week and thus creates deadly competition for small machine-owners. The constantly continuing changes in machine construction and their cheapening just as constantly depreciate old specimens, as a result of which only large capitalists who buy them in masses at fabulously low prices can profitably apply the latter. Finally, as in all such revolutionary processes, decisive importance belongs here too to the replacement of man by the steam engine.... Thus, for example, in England enormous spheres of production of "wearing apparel," as well as the majority of other productions, are currently experiencing the revolution of the transition of manufacture, craft, and homework into factory production, but even before this transition all the aforementioned forms, under the impact of large-scale industry, underwent a complete change, became decomposed, acquired a distorted aspect, and long ago reproduced and even surpassed all the monstrosity of the factory system without absorbing its positive aspects.

[487] No poison destroys harmful insects more thoroughly than the factory law destroys such "natural limits."

[490] In factories and manufactures not yet subordinated to the factory law, terrible excessive labor prevails periodically—during so-called seasons, and at indefinite moments—owing to sudden orders. In the external department of the factory, manufacture, and shop—in the sphere of homework, which is anyway completely irregular, standing in complete dependence on the caprice of the capitalist regarding raw materials and orders, who is bound by no considerations about the use of premises, machinery, etc., and risks nothing but the hides of the workers themselves—in this external department an industrial reserve army is thus systematically cultivated, which is constantly ready to serve capital, which in one part of the year is destroyed owing to the most inhuman penal labor, and in another part of the year is reduced to vagrant status owing to lack of work.

[500–501] But however terrible and repugnant the decomposition of the old family under the capitalist system, nevertheless large-scale industry, by assigning a decisive role to women, adolescents, and children of both sexes in the socially-organized process of production outside the home, creates a new economic foundation for a higher form of family and relations between the sexes. Of course, it is equally absurd to regard the Christian-Germanic form of family as absolute, as well as the ancient Roman, ancient Greek, or Oriental form, which, incidentally, form a single historical series of development in relation to one another. Obviously, the composition of a combined labor force from persons of both sexes and different ages, being in its spontaneous, crude, capitalist form—where the worker exists for the process of production and not the process of production for the worker—a pestilential source of ruin and slavery, must, under appropriate conditions, transform itself, on the contrary, into a source of human development.

*Das heißt der Mehrwert kann nicht zum Beispiel steigen ohne Fall im Wert der Arbeitskraft* [That is, surplus-value cannot, for example, rise without a fall in the value of labor-power]

[531] Third: An increase or decrease in surplus-value is always a consequence, but never a cause of the corresponding decrease or increase in the value of labor-power.

[532] Although the price of labor-power remained unchanged, it nonetheless stands now higher than its value. If the price of labor-power fell, but not to the lower limit of 1½ shillings determined by its value, but to 2 shillings, 10 pence, 2 shillings, 6 pence, etc., then even this fallen price would still represent an increased quantity of means of subsistence.

[644–645] ... In all spheres the increase in the variable part of capital, and consequently the number of employed workers, is always linked with strong fluctuations and the creation of temporary overpopulation, regardless of whether it assumes the striking form of the repulsion of already-employed workers or the less noticeable but equally effective form of the impeded absorption of additional working population through its customary channels.

[772–773] || Private property obtained through the labor of its owner, founded, so to speak, on the fusion of the individual independent worker with his instruments and means of labor, is displaced by capitalist private property, which rests on the exploitation of alien, formally free labor-power.

When this process of transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society in depth and breadth, when workers are already transformed into proletarians and the conditions of their labor into capital, when the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialization of labor, the further transformation of land and other means of production into socially exploited and consequently general means of production, and the expropriation of private proprietors connected therewith, assumes a new form. Now it is no longer the worker conducting independent economy who is subjected to expropriation, but the capitalist exploiting many workers.

This expropriation is accomplished through the play of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist beats many capitalists. Hand in hand with this centralization, or the expropriation of many capitalists by few, the cooperative form of the labor process develops on constantly increasing scale, the conscious technical application of science develops, the planned exploitation of land develops, the transformation of means of labor into such means of labor as permit only collective use, the economy of all means of production through their application as means of production of combined social labor, the drawing of all peoples into the net of the world market, and therewith the international character of the capitalist regime. Together with the constantly diminishing number of magnates of capital who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, there grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degeneration, exploitation; but at the same time there grows the revolt of the working class, which is constantly increasing in numbers, which is educated, united, and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist production process itself. The monopoly of capital becomes the fetter of the mode of production which grew up and flourished under it. It bursts asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

*Translated from the German*

# THE RUSSIAN EDITION OF THE FIRST VOLUME OF "CAPITAL"

K. Marx. "*Capital*". Volume One. Book I: The Process of Production of Capital. St. Petersburg, 1872.

[Not before end of 1888]

[3] That the essence of exchange-value is something completely distinct and independent of the physically obligatory existence of commodities, or of their existence as use-values, is evident at first glance from their exchange-relation. It is characterized precisely by abstraction from use-value. Viewed from the standpoint of exchange-value, every commodity is equally good as every other, if only it is in the proper quantity.

Therefore, first of all, commodities must be considered independently of their exchange-relations or the form in which their exchange-values manifest themselves, considered simply as values.

[11] The value of a commodity, expressed in this way in the use-value of another commodity, is called its relative value.

[16] Another is the form of value which exists only in the relation of one commodity to another. The use-value or body of the commodity plays here a new role. It becomes the form of manifestation of the value of the commodity, and therefore its own opposite. Likewise, the concrete, useful labor contained in the use-value becomes its own opposite—the simple form of manifestation of abstract human labor.

... A commodity, from the moment of its appearance, is a two-fold thing: use-value and value, the product of useful labor and the abstract congelment of labor. Therefore, in order to represent itself as what it is, the commodity must double its form. It possesses the form of use-value by its nature; this is its natural form. The form of value it acquires only in circulation with other commodities. But its form of value must again be objective form. The only objective forms of commodities are their use-forms, their natural forms. Since the natural form of a commodity, for example linen, is the direct opposite of its form of value, it must make some other commodity's natural form its own form of value.

[17] The use-value of some commodity generally exists for another commodity only insofar as it serves as the form of manifestation of its value.

... Both forms, the relative form of value of one commodity and the equivalent form of another, are forms of exchange-value. Both are only moments, mutually conditioning one another, determinations of a single relative expression of value, but distributed as poles at the two extremes of the concept of a commodity brought to equality.

Quantitativeness is not contained in the equivalent form of a commodity.

[18] The magnitude of value of a commodity can be expressed only in the use-value of another commodity as relative value. The form of the directly exchangeable use-value, or equivalent, a commodity acquires, on the contrary, only as material in which the value of another commodity is expressed.

[50] Things which are not commodities in themselves, for example conscience, honor, etc., can be alienated by their owners for money and thus through their price acquire the form of commodities. Thus a thing can formally have a price without at the same time having value. The expression of value becomes imaginary here, as certain magnitudes in mathematics or the "infinite conclusion" in logic...

Price is only the ideal form of value of a commodity. Consequently, it at the same time expresses that a commodity does not yet possess real form of value, or that its natural form is not its universal equivalent form...

Alongside its real form, for example iron, a commodity can possess, in price, the ideal form of value or the imagined guise of gold; but it cannot at one and the same time actually be both gold and iron.

[58] The two metamorphoses which form the circulation of one commodity constitute at the same time the opposite partial metamorphoses of two other commodities. One and the same commodity (linen) opens the series of its own metamorphoses and closes the complete metamorphosis of another commodity (wheat).

[61] In the first half of its circulation the commodity exchanges place with money. Simultaneously its use-form leaves circulation and enters the sphere of consumption. In its place steps the form of value of the commodity or the money chrysalis. The second half of circulation it passes through no longer in its natural skin, but in its golden envelope.

[74] Already at the very beginning of the development of commodity circulation there develops the necessity and passion for retaining the product of its first metamorphosis, the transformed form of the commodity or its golden chrysalis. The commodity is sold in such a case not in order to buy a commodity, but to replace the commodity-form with the money-form. From a simple intermediary in exchange this change of form becomes the goal. The discarded commodity-form is not permitted to function as the absolutely alienable form or only transitory money-form. Money hardens into treasure, and commodity-sellers become hoarders of treasure.

[76] Ancient society brands money with the name of the divisible coin of its economic and moral organization. The new society, which in its very infancy drags Plutus by the hair from the bowels of the earth, welcomes in the glitter of gold the brilliant embodiment of its own vital principle.

[77] Alongside the immediate form of treasure there develops its aesthetic form, possession of golden and silver things. It grows together with the wealth of bourgeois society.

[83] If Japan's foreign trade—imposed upon it by Europe—brings about the conversion of natural rent into money rent, then—the end of its exemplary agriculture. Its narrow economic conditions of existence crumble.

[87] Throughout history capital first appears against landed property in the form of money, as monetary force, as merchant capital, or as usurer's capital.

[89] First of all, therefore, we observe a characteristic formal difference between the circulation M—C—M and the circulation C—M—C. At the same time, we shall immediately see also the difference in content that hides itself behind this apparently merely formal difference.

[90] The return of money to its original starting-point does not depend on whether the commodity is sold dearer or cheaper than it was bought; this circumstance affects only the magnitude of the returned sum; but the phenomenon of return itself occurs every time the bought commodity is again sold, and thus the form of circulation expressed by the formula M—C—M is fully described. In this consists, therefore, the tangible difference between the circulation of money as capital and its circulation merely as money.

[92] This increment, or the excess over the original value, I call surplus-value (*Mehrwert*, *surplus value*). Therefore the original value, given out as a loan, not only is preserved in this circulation, but moreover changes its magnitude, adds to itself a certain surplus-value, or, what amounts to the same thing, increases in value. And this very movement transforms it into capital.

[97] M—M', money which begets money—(*money which begets money*)—such is capital's definition in the mouths of its first interpreters, the mercantilists—is indeed only the immediate manifestation of value possessing the property of adding new value to itself—self-increasing value.

[98] Consequently, in reality, the formula M—C—M'—is the general formula of capital as it appears directly in the sphere of circulation.

[102] ... The buyer performs an "act of production" when he transforms, for example, stockings which a merchant deals in, into money.

[109] The transformation of money into capital must be developed on the basis of the eternal laws of commodity exchange, so that the exchange of equivalents for equivalents constitutes its starting-point.

[118] ...

[119–120] The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within the limits of which the sale and purchase of labor-power takes place, represents in truth a real Eden of the inborn rights of man.

No one rules here except Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom! because both buyer and seller of any commodity, for example labor-power, are determined in their actions only by their own free will. They contract with each other as free, legally equal persons. The contract is a free product in which their wills give themselves mutual legal expression.

Equality! because they relate to each other only as owners of commodities, and therefore exchange equivalents for equivalents. Property! because each disposes only over that which is his own. Bentham! because each is concerned only with himself. The sole force uniting them and putting them into relation with one another is the force of their own advantage, the force of their individual interest, the force of their private interests.

[123] An instrument of labor is a thing, or a complex of things, which the worker places between himself and the object of his labor, and which serves him as a means to direct his activity onto that object. He uses the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of things in order to make them act as forces on other things, in accordance with his purpose. Except in those cases where he seizes ready-made means of subsistence, for example fruit—when his own bodily organs serve as the sole instruments of labor—it can generally be said that whatever object is in direct contact with the worker (which he holds in his hand, for instance) is not the object of labor, but the instrument of labor. Thus the objects of nature themselves become organs of his activity, organs that he annexes to the organs of his own body and through which he extends his natural size.

[243–244] One category of manufacturers secured for themselves, as before, special seignorial rights over the children of proletarians. These were precisely manufacturers of silk goods.... Although the Act of 1844 did "rob" them of the "freedom" to exploit children under 11 years of age more than 6½ hours a day, it nonetheless secured for them the privilege of employing children aged 11 to 13 years for 10 hours a day, and abolished for this branch of industry the compulsory school attendance legally binding for all other factory children. This time the pretext for such a privilege was the claim that "the delicate texture of the fabrics requires such delicacy of fingers as can only be acquired through early introduction to these factories." Thus children were beaten here for the delicacy of their fingers, as in South America cattle are beaten for their hides and tallow.

[260] The owner of money or commodities first becomes a true capitalist only where the minimum of values expended on production considerably exceeds the daily maximum. Here, as in natural science, the justice of the law discovered by Hegel in his logic is confirmed—that simple quantitative changes, having reached a certain point, transform themselves into qualitative differences.

[264] Despite the given limits of the working day *ac*, the portion *bc* evidently can be lengthened, if not by extending it beyond its endpoint *c*, which at the same time constitutes the endpoint of the working day *ac*, then by pushing back its starting-point *b* in the opposite direction, i.e., in the direction of *a*.

[347] Machines serve as long as means of cheapening the product as long as less labor is spent on their production than is displaced by their application. For capital, however, these limits are narrower. Since it pays not the labor used up but the value of the labor-power used, the application of machines for it is limited by the difference between the value of the machine and the value of the labor-power it replaces.

[362] The unlimited extension of the working day, which is produced by machinery in the hands of capitalists, later leads, as we have seen, to a reaction of society, threatened in its foundations; hence—the legally limited normal working day. As a consequence of the latter, a phenomenon acquires special importance which we have already encountered before—namely: the intensification of labor.


| | Exports. Value | Exports. Value | Exports. Value | Exports. Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| | 1848 | 1851 | 1860 | 1865 |
| | pounds sterling | pounds sterling | pounds sterling | pounds sterling |
| Cotton mills | | | | |
| Yarn | 5,927,831 | 6,634,026 | 9,870,875 | 10,351,049 |
| Fabrics | 16,753,369 | 23,454,810 | 42,141,505 | 46,903,796 |
| Linen and hemp mills | | | | |
| Yarn | 493,449 | 951,426 | 2,505,497 | — |
| Fabrics | 2,802,789 | 4,107,396 | 4,804,803 | 9,155,318 |
| Silk mills | | | | |
| Yarn | 77,789 | 195,380 | 918,342 | 768,067 |
| Fabrics | — | 1,130,398 | 1,587,303 | 1,409,221 |
| Woolen mills | | | | |
| Yarn | 776,975 | 1,484,544 | 3,849,450 | 5,424,017 |
| Fabrics | 5,733,828 | 8,377,183 | 12,156,998 | 20,102,259 |

[403] In carding rooms and similar places rising dust and dirt irritate all the head openings of workers, excite cough, impede breathing.

[486–487] ...

[506] The constant buying and selling of labor-power is the form. The content consists in this, that a part of already objectified alien labor, constantly appropriated by the capitalist without corresponding equivalent, he constantly replaces anew with a greater quantity of alien living labor. The original right of property appeared to us as founded on one's own labor.... Property appears on the side of the capitalist as the right to appropriate alien unpaid labor or its product, and on the side of the worker as the impossibility of appropriating his own product. The separation of property from labor becomes a necessary consequence of a law which appears to issue from their identity.

[511] ...

[512] Although the wastefulness of the capitalist never has the goodnatured character of the wastefulness of reckless feudal lords, and is even more fundamentally rooted in base niggardliness and careful calculation, nevertheless his wastefulness grows with accumulation, and one does not hinder the other.

[513] ...

[536] As in religion man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production he is governed by the products of his own hands.

[539] The growth of social capital is accomplished through the growth of many individual capitals. With other things being equal, each of these separate capitals, as well as the concentration of means of production connected with it, grows in proportion to the share it forms of total social capital. At the same time there appear offshoots of the original capital which, having separated from it, function as new independent capitals. Of course, the division of wealth among the members of the capitalist family plays a considerable role here. Therefore with the accumulation of capital the number of capitalists grows more or less.

# [Part 3/5] [539—540]

To this fragmentation of all social capital into many individual capitals, or the mutual repulsion of its component parts, there stands opposed their attraction. This is no longer the simple concentration of means of production and the subordination of labor to them, identical with accumulation. This is the concentration of already formed capitals, the destruction of their individual independence, the expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, the transformation of many small capitals into a few large ones. This process differs from the first in that it involves merely a change in the distribution of already existing functioning capitals; therefore it is not limited by the absolute increase of social wealth or the absolute limits of accumulation. Here capital accumulates in a few hands in enormous masses because it disappears from many others. This properly is concentration (concentration), which must be distinguished from accumulation (accumulation).

[557] The Venetian monk Ortes, one of the greatest economic writers of the eighteenth century, regards the antagonism of capitalist production as a general natural law of social wealth. "The economic good and evil of any nation are always in equilibrium ('il bene ed il male economico in una nazione sempre all' istessa misura'), the excess of goods with some always equals their lack with others ('la copia dei beni in alcuni sempre aequale alia mancanza di esse in altri'). The enormous wealth of some is always accompanied by the deprivation of the most necessary things from a far greater number of others." The wealth of a nation corresponds to its population, and its poverty corresponds to its wealth. The industry of some compels the idleness of others. The poor and idle—this is the necessary fruit of the rich and industrious, and so forth. Some ten years after Ortes, the Protestant clergyman Townsend glorified, in the crudest manner, poverty as the necessary condition of wealth. "Compulsion to work by legislative means is connected with too great difficulties, violence, and noise, whereas hunger acts not only as a peaceful, silent, and permanent pressure, but as the most natural motive for industry and labor, it also calls forth the greatest exertion of strength." The whole task, consequently, consists in making hunger permanent in the working class, and concerning this, according to Townsend, the law of population takes care, particularly active among the poor. "It appears that there exists such a law of nature that the poor are to a certain degree improvident (namely, so frivolous that they come into the world without a silver spoon in their mouth), so that there are always enough people to perform the most servile, filthy, and base functions in society. The mass of human happiness ('the fond of human happiness') is greatly increased by the fact that the more delicate ('the more delicate') are freed from the burdens and can unimpeded follow their higher calling... The Poor Law has a tendency to destroy the harmony and beauty, symmetry and order of this system, established in the world by God and nature."

[615] In England serfdom disappeared in fact at the end of the fourteenth century. The vast majority of the population then consisted, and still more in the fifteenth century, of free peasants possessing their own farms, regardless of what feudal pretexts concealed their right of property.

[649—650] One capitalist beats down many others. Hand in hand with this concentration or expropriation of many capitalists by a few, there develops on an ever-increasing scale the cooperative form of the labor process, the conscious technological application of science, the purposeful exploitation of the land, the transformation of tools of labor into instruments that can only be employed collectively, and the economization of all means of production through their employment as means of production of combined, social labor.

[667] Products of labor would not become commodities if they were not the products of independent, private labors carried on independently of one another. The social connection of these private labors exists materially if they are members of the organic, social division of labor, and therefore their products satisfy different needs, from the sum of which is constituted also the organic system of social needs. This materially-social connection of private labors, carried on independently of one another, exists only in possibility; in reality it becomes actualized only through exchange of the products of these labors. Therefore the product of private labor has a social form only when it has the form of value, and consequently also the form of exchangeability with other products of labor. It has the form of immediate exchangeability in the case when its bodily or natural form is at the same time the form of its exchangeability with another commodity, or when it has the significance of the form of value of another commodity. This occurs, as we have seen, with the product of labor only when, in consequence of its relation to another commodity as value, it is in the equivalent form, or plays the role of equivalent with respect to another commodity.

## GERMAN EDITION OF THE SECOND VOLUME OF "CAPITAL"

"Capital" by K. Marx. Volume Two. Book II: The Process of Circulation of Capital. Hamburg, 1885
[Not before 1893]

[22] * Everything else that Rodbertus contributed to political economy stands on the same level. His reworking of the theory of surplus-value into utopia was already unintentionally subjected to criticism by Marx in "The Poverty of Philosophy"; all that could still be said about this has been said by me in the preface to the German translation of that work. His explanation of commercial crises by insufficient consumption of the working class is already found in Sismondi in "Nouveaux Principes d'Economie Politique," bk. IV, ch. IV. Only Sismondi had constantly in view the world market, whereas Rodbertus's horizon does not extend beyond the Prussian border. His speculative arguments about whether wages are drawn from capital or from income belong to the domain of scholasticism and are completely superseded by the content of the third section of this second volume of "Capital." His theory of rent remained his exclusive property and can peacefully rest until Marx's manuscript appears in print, containing its criticism.

[208—209] 5) As regards the method of calculating turnover, let us give the word to an American economist:

"In some branches of production the entire capital advanced manages to return, or turn over, several times in the course of one year; in some other branches one part turns over more than once a year, while another part does not turn over so rapidly. The capitalist must calculate his profit according to the average period required for all his capital to pass through his hands, or turn over once. Suppose someone in a certain enterprise has invested half his capital in buildings and machinery, which are renewed once in ten years; a quarter of the capital in tools, etc., which are renewed in two years, and the last quarter, spent on wages and raw materials, turns over twice a year. Let his entire capital equal 50,000 dollars. Then his annual expenditure will be:

50,000:2 = 25,000 dollars in 10 years = 2,500 dollars in 1 year
50,000:4 = 12,500 " " 2 years = 6,250 " " "
50,000:4 = 12,500 " " ½ " = 25,000 " " "

In 1 year = 33,750 dollars.

...Consequently, the average time in which all his capital turns over once equals 16 months...

[534] The introduction of foreign trade into the analysis of the annually reproduced value of the product can therefore only confuse matters, without providing a new moment either for the problem itself or for its solution. Consequently, it should not be taken into account at all; therefore gold should be regarded here as an immediate element of annual reproduction, and not as a commodity element imported from outside through exchange.

Translated from the German

## RUSSIAN EDITION OF THE SECOND VOLUME OF "CAPITAL"

K. Marx. "Capital." Edited by F. Engels.
Volume Two. Book II: The Process of Circulation of Capital.
St. Petersburg, 1885
[Not before 1893]

[262] In the first volume we analyzed the capitalist process of production both as a single act and as a process of reproduction: the production of surplus-value and the production of capital itself. We then simply assumed that capital, within the process of circulation, changes forms, that an exchange of matter occurs in it, and we did not dwell further on this question. We thus assumed, on the one hand, that the capitalist sells the product at its value, and on the other hand, that in the sphere of circulation there are material means of production in order to begin the process anew, or to carry it on without interruption. The only act from the sphere of circulation on which we dwelt there was the purchase and sale of labor-power, as an essential condition of capitalist production.

[296] Here lies the immediate question: how is the value of capital consumed in production replaced from the annual product, and how is the movement of this replacement absorbed by the consumption of surplus-value by capitalists and wages by workers? Consequently, we are concerned first of all with simple reproduction in its previous dimensions. Furthermore, not only is it assumed that products are exchanged at their value, but that no change in value occurs in the component parts of productive capital. However, to whatever extent prices deviate, this circumstance cannot affect the movement of social capital.

[296—297] While we investigated the production of value and the value of the product of capital as a particular phenomenon, for analysis it was completely all the same in what natural form the commodity product appeared, whether it consisted of machines, for example, or mirrors. The form was for us only an example, and for illustration any branch of production could equally serve. What directly interested us was the process of production itself, which appeared in all cases as the process of individual capital. Insofar as the reproduction of capital was concerned, it was sufficient to assume that, within the sphere of circulation, that part of the commodity product which represented capital value found opportunities to transform itself anew into elements of production, i.e., found opportunity to assume again the form of productive capital; just as it was sufficient to assume that the worker and capitalist find on the market commodities on which the one expends his wages, the other his surplus-value. Such a purely formal mode of presentation is now insufficient in investigating all social capital and the value of its product. The transformation anew of part of the value of the product into capital, the entry of another part into the personal consumption of the class of capitalists and the working class forms the movement of the value of the product itself, from which the entire social capital arose; this movement is not merely a replacement of value, but an exchange of matter, and depends as much on the mutual relation of the component parts of the value of the social product as on their use-value, on their material form.

[328] Matters stand differently with respect to the product of the total social capital. All material elements of reproduction must in their natural form constitute a part of this product itself. The consumed constant part of capital can be replaced insofar as in the product of the newly appearing part of constant capital, new means of production again appear in natural form, which can actually play the role of constant capital. Therefore, assuming simple reproduction, the value of that part of the product which consists of means of production must equal the constant part of the value of social capital.

Furthermore: from an individual standpoint, the capitalist, by newly added labor in the value of his product, produces only his variable capital plus surplus-value, whereas the constant part of value is transferred to the product by the concrete character of newly added labor.

Therefore, from a social standpoint, that part of the social working day which is occupied in making means of production, adding to them new value and transferring to them the value of means of production consumed in their manufacture, produces not new constant capital intended to replace the old, consumed in the form of means of production, i.e., constant capital consumed in both I and II divisions: it produces only a product intended to enter productive consumption. The entire value of this product is therefore that value which can act anew in the form of constant capital, which constant capital can purchase anew in its natural form, which therefore—from a social standpoint—does not break down into either variable capital or surplus-value.

On the other hand, that part of the social working day which is occupied in making articles of consumption produces no social capital replacement at all. It produces only products which by their natural form are intended to realize the value of variable capital and surplus-value of both I and II divisions.

[330—331] This is perfectly true, indeed all this is evident to every child. But then it is said: all this holds equally with respect to the value of all other commodities. It should be said: this holds with respect to the value of all articles of consumption, with respect to the value of that part of the social product which enters into the fund of consumption, i.e., with respect to that part of social value of the product which is expended as income. The sum of value of all these commodities indeed equals the value of all means of production consumed in them (constant part of capital) plus that value created by labor added to them (wages and surplus-value). Consequently, all consumers in aggregate can pay this entire sum of value, precisely because the value of each individual commodity consists of c + v + m; but the sum of value of all commodities entering into the consumption fund, taken as a whole, in its greatest magnitude can only equal that part of the value of the social product which breaks down into v + m, i.e., equals that value which labor spent in the course of the year added to the existing means of production—to the constant capital value. As regards the constant capital value, we have seen that it is replaced from the social mass of products in a twofold manner. First, through exchange between capitalists of I, producing means of production, and capitalists of II, manufacturing articles of consumption. Here lies hidden the source of the phrase that what is capital for one will be income for another. But it does not happen that way. The 2,000 c existing in articles of consumption valued at 2,000 form for the class of capitalists II constant capital value. Consequently, they themselves cannot consume it, although the product must be consumed in its natural form. On the other hand, 2,000 I(v + m) represents wages plus surplus-value produced by the class of capitalists and the class of workers of I. They exist in natural form as means of production, as objects in which their own value cannot be consumed. Consequently, we have a sum of value of 4,000, of which one half, both before and after exchange, replaces only constant capital, while the other half forms income. But, second, the constant capital of division I is replaced in natural form, partly through exchange between capitalists of the first division, partly through its replacement in natural form in each individual enterprise.

The phrase that the entire annual value of the product must, in the final analysis, be paid by consumers would be true only if by consumers were understood two different kinds of them: personal consumers and productive consumers. But the fact that part of the product must be consumed productively means only that it must act as capital and cannot be consumed as income.

[333] In this case capitalist society differs from savage society not in the way Senior thinks, that savages possess the privilege and property of expending their labor in a certain time, which brings them no income, i.e., articles that are converted into (exchanged for) articles of consumption. The difference consists in the following:

A) Capitalist society expends relatively more of its annual labor, which it has at its disposal, on making means of production (i.e., constant capital), which cannot be broken down into income either in the form of wages or in the form of surplus-value, but can only play the role of capital.

B) When a savage makes bows, arrows, stone hammers, axes, baskets, etc., he knows full well that he is not expending time in making articles of consumption, that consequently he is satisfying his need for means of production and nothing more. Besides, the savage commits a grave economic sin by his indifference regarding the expenditure of time, sometimes, according to Taylor, spending a whole month making an arrow.

The current notion, by which some political economists strive to free themselves from the theoretical difficulty, i.e., from understanding the actual connection that what is capital for one is income for another, and vice versa—is partly correct, and becomes completely erroneous (contains within itself, consequently, complete misunderstanding of the entire process of exchange occurring in annual reproduction, and consequently also the factual basis of something correct), as soon as it is presented as a general rule.

[358] In both cases external trade can help; in the first case to convert commodities of I held up in money form into articles of consumption, in the second case to dispose of excess commodity. But external trade, insofar as it does not simply replace elements (in accordance also with value), only transfers the contradictions to a wider sphere, opens wider scope for them.

[359] Capitalist production in general does not exist without external trade. If we assume normal annual reproduction on a given scale, this assumption includes that external trade replaces domestic products with objects of different consumption form, different natural form, not at all affecting value relations, and consequently also not changing the value relations in which the two large categories exchange themselves: means of production and articles of consumption, nor the relations between constant capital, variable capital, and surplus-value into which the value of the product of each of these categories breaks down. The introduction of external trade into the analysis of the annually reproduced value of the product can therefore only confuse matters, without providing a new moment either for the problem itself or for its solution. Consequently, it should not be taken into account at all; therefore gold must be regarded here as an immediate element of annual reproduction, and not treated as a commodity element imported from outside through exchange.

[382—383] ...The greater the productive capital already functioning in a given country (including the labor-power embodied in it, which creates surplus product), the more developed the productive power of labor and along with it the more advanced the technical means for rapid expansion of production of means of production—the greater therefore also the quantity of surplus product both in its value and in the quantity of use-values in which it is represented—the greater:

First, in the hands of A, A', A", etc., the potential additional productive capital in the form of surplus product,

and, second, in the hands of A, A', A" the quantity of this surplus product transformed into money, i.e., potential additional money capital.

[384—385] However, from the investigation of simple reproduction we already know that a certain quantity of money must be in the hands of capitalists I and II for the replacement of their surplus product. There the money serving only for expenditure of income on articles of consumption returned to the capitalists as they were spent to exchange for their respective commodities; here these same moneys appear again, but their activity is different. Both A, A" and B, B' (I) supply one another with money for transforming surplus product into additional potential capital, and both contribute back to circulation the newly formed additional money capital as a means of purchase.

The only thing assumed here is that the quantities of money (speed of turnover and other conditions are assumed the same) existing in the country are sufficient both for active circulation and for treasure-accumulation, i.e., an assumption which must be fulfilled also in simple commodity circulation. Only the function of treasure is different here. Likewise the available quantity of money must be greater, 1) because in capitalist production every product (with the exception of newly won precious metals and those few products which producers themselves consume) is manufactured as a commodity, i.e., must pass through the money form; 2) because in capitalist production the mass of commodity capital and the dimensions of their value are not only greater absolutely, but increase with incomparably greater speed; 3) the ever more expanding variable capital must constantly transform itself into money capital; 4) because along with the development of production there arises the formation of new money capitals, therefore there must be material for their accumulation. If this holds for the first phase of capitalist production, when even credit is accompanied predominantly by metallic circulation, then for the more developed phase of the credit system this holds insofar as metallic circulation remains its basis.

## GERMAN EDITION OF THE THIRD VOLUME OF "CAPITAL"
PARTS 1-2

"Capital" by K. Marx. Volume Three. Parts 1—2.
Book III: The Process of Capitalist Production, Taken as a Whole. Hamburg, 1894
[After December 25, 1894]

### 1. Part First

[367] * The transition from feudal mode of production is accomplished in two ways. The producer becomes a merchant and capitalist, in contrast to agricultural natural economy and the guild-bound craft of medieval urban industry. This is indeed a revolutionizing path. Or the merchant directly subordinates production to himself. However great the historical significance of the latter path as a transitional stage—an example of which is the English clothier of the seventeenth century who subjected to his control the weavers, who remained nevertheless independent, selling them wool and buying from them cloth—nevertheless this path in itself does not lead to a revolution in the old mode of production, since it rather conserves and maintains it as its presupposition.

[368—369] A similar phenomenon is observed in the transition to manufacture of those branches which were previously carried on in craft manner or as subsidiary branches of rural industry. Depending on the technical level of development of this small independent production—there where it itself already applies machines permitted by craft production—the transition to large-scale industry also occurs; the machine is now set in motion not by hand, but by steam, as, for example, has recently been happening in English hosiery manufacture.

Thus the transition is accomplished in three ways: first, the merchant directly becomes an industrialist; this occurs in branches of craft based on trade, particularly in the production of luxury articles, which together with raw materials and workers are imported by merchants from abroad, as in the fifteenth century in Italy from Constantinople. Second, the merchant makes small masters his intermediaries (middlemen) or directly buys from independent producers; nominally he leaves him independent and leaves his mode of production unchanged. Third, the industrialist becomes a merchant and directly produces on a large scale for trade.

In the Middle Ages, as Poppe correctly says, the merchant was merely a "transmitter" of goods produced by guild craftsmen or peasants. The merchant becomes an industrialist, or, more precisely, puts the craft, especially rural small industry to work for himself.

[369] As soon as manufacture is to some degree consolidated, it—and even more large-scale industry—itself creates its market, conquers it with its commodities.

### 2. Part Second

[95—96, 110—111] Metallic circulation possesses its remedy in the import and export of precious metals, which immediately as coins enter circulation and thus by their inflow or outflow bring about a fall or rise in commodity prices. Such action on commodity prices should now be artificially exerted by banks through imitation of the laws of metallic circulation. If gold flows in from abroad, this proves that there is insufficient money in circulation, that the value of money is too high, and commodity prices too low; consequently, banknotes should be thrown into circulation in proportion to the quantity of newly imported gold. Conversely, they should be withdrawn from circulation in proportion to the quantity of gold flowing out of the country. In other words, the issue of banknotes should be regulated in accordance with the import and export of precious metals or with the exchange rate... Lord Overstone (the banker Jones Loyd), Colonel Torrens, Norman, Clay, Arbuthnot, and many other writers, known in England under the name of the "currency principle" school, not only preached this doctrine, but through the intermediary of the banking acts of Sir Robert Peel of 1844 and 1845 made it the foundation of existing English and Scottish banking legislation... — F. E.} ...

{What, then, does the father of the banking act, the banker Samuel Jones Loyd, alias Lord Overstone, say about all this?

As early as 1848, he repeated before a commission of the House of Lords on the commercial crisis of 1847 (C. D. 1848/57), that

"monetary stringency and high interest rates, caused by lack of capital, cannot be alleviated by increased issue of banknotes" (1514),

although a government decree of October 25, 1847 alone, authorizing increased issue of banknotes, was sufficient to rob the crisis of its severity.

He believes that

"high interest rates and depressed state of factory industry are an inevitable result of the decrease of material capital applied for industrial and commercial purposes" (1604).

And yet the depressed state of factory industry during a long series of months expressed itself precisely in the fact that material commodity capital filled warehouses in excess, finding no outlet, and that precisely for this reason material productive capital was wholly or half-inactive, to avoid producing even more commodity capital, finding no buyers.

And before a commission of the House of Commons in 1857 on banking legislation, he said the following:

"Thanks to the strict and precise observance of the fundamental provisions of the 1844 act, everything proceeded regularly and easily, the monetary system is firm and unshakeable, the prosperity of the country is indisputable, public confidence in the 1844 act grows daily, and if the commission desires further practical proofs of the solidity of the principles on which this act rests, and of the beneficial consequences which it ensures, then a true and sufficient answer is this: look around you, observe the present state of affairs in our country, observe the contentment of the people, observe the wealth and prosperity of all classes of society. Following this advice, the commission will be in a position to decide whether it should prevent further operation of the act, through which such successes have been achieved" (B.C. 1857, No. 4189)

The answer to this encomium, which Overstone sang before the commission on July 14, was a letter to the direction of the Bank on November 12, by which the government suspended the operation of the miraculous law of 1844, in order to save what could still be saved. — F. E.\

[200—203] ...Extra profit, if it is created normally and not through accidental circumstances of the circulation process, is always produced as the difference between the products of two equal quantities of capital and labor, and this extra profit is transformed into ground rent if equal quantities of capital and labor are employed on land plots equal in size and yield unequal results. However, there is no absolute necessity that this extra profit arise from unequal results of equal quantities of employed capital. Enterprises can employ capitals of different magnitudes; in most cases they do; but equal proportional parts, for example 100 pounds sterling of each capital, yield unequal results, that is, the rate of profit differs. This is the general prerequisite for the existence of extra profit in any branch of capital employment whatever. The other question is the transformation of this extra profit into the form of ground rent (rent in general as a form distinct from profit); it is therefore necessary to investigate when, how, and under what circumstances this transformation occurs...

Ricardo is correct in the following statement, insofar as it is limited to differential rent:

"Whatever diminishes the difference in the produce obtained from the same or new land, tends to lower rent; and whatever increases that difference necessarily produces the opposite effect, and tends to raise it" (ibid., p. 74).

To these causes belong, however, not only the general (fertility and location), but also 1) the distribution of taxes, depending on whether it affects evenly or not; the latter always occurs when taxes are not centralized, as, for example, in England, and when tax is levied not on rent but on land; 2) differences arising from unequal development of agriculture in different regions of the country, since this branch of production, owing to its traditional character, is more difficult to level than industry, and 3) unequal distribution of capital among tenants. Since the penetration of the capitalist mode of production into agriculture, the transformation of the peasant from independent proprietor into wage-worker, is in reality the last conquest of this mode of production in general, these differences here are more significant than in any other branch of production.

...Two different bases of differential rent, fertility and location, may operate in opposite directions. A land plot may be very well located and very little fertile, and conversely. This circumstance is important, because it explains to us why in land cultivation in a given country the transition may occur just as readily from better to worse land as conversely. Finally, it is clear that the progress of social production in general acts, on the one hand, in a leveling manner on the location of land plots as a basis of differential rent, creating local markets, creating location through construction of means of communication; and on the other hand, intensifies the differences in location of land plots both as a consequence of the separation of agriculture from industry and as a result of the formation of large centers of production alongside the reverse side of this phenomenon: the intensification of the relative isolation of the countryside [relative Vereinsamung des Landes].

...Partly on the development of agrochemistry, partly on the development of mechanization of agriculture depends the degree to which on land plots of equal natural fertility the latter can actually be utilized... This again shows how historically—with the progress of agricultural culture—the transition may occur both from more fertile lands to less fertile, and conversely. Equal results can also be achieved through artificially produced improvements in soil composition or simply through changes in methods of agriculture. Finally, the same result may be obtained as a consequence of change of soil type due to different subsoil conditions, once the latter is also brought into cultivation and joined to the arable horizon.

[211] Thus that first false presupposition of differential rent, which still prevails with West, Malthus, Ricardo—namely, that differential rent necessarily presupposes transition to worse and worse land, or constantly diminishing productivity of agriculture—falls away. Differential rent, as we have seen, can occur with transition to better and better land; differential rent can occur if the lowest stage is occupied by better land instead of the previous worse; it can be connected with growing progress of agriculture. Its condition is exclusively the inequality of land categories. Insofar as development of productivity is concerned—insofar differential rent presupposes that the increase in absolute fertility of the entire cultivated area does not destroy this inequality, but either intensifies it, or leaves it unchanged, or only diminishes it.

[219—220] ...If we regard the average rent per acre or hectare of all cultivated land, as is usually done in statistical works when comparing different countries at one and the same time or different times in one and the same country, it appears that the average height of rent per acre, and therefore the total sum of rent, in a certain measure (although by no means in the same measure, but in a considerably greater measure) corresponds not to relative but to absolute fertility of agriculture in the country, that is, corresponds to the mass of products obtained on average from equal land area. For the greater the proportion of the total area constituted by better categories of soil, the greater the mass of products with equal expenditure of capital from a land area of equal magnitude, and the greater the average rent per acre. Under the opposite condition the reverse occurs. As a result it seems that rent is determined not by the relation of differential fertility, but by absolute fertility, and that thus the law of differential rent is destroyed. Therefore some phenomena are denied or attempts are made to explain them by nonexistent differences in average grain prices and differential fertility of the cultivated land plots—phenomena based simply on the fact that the relation of the total sum of rent both to the entire area of cultivated land and to all capital invested in land, with equal fertility of nonproductive land, and therefore with equal prices of production and equal differences between different land categories, is determined not only by rent obtained per acre, or the rate of rent on capital, but also by the relation of the area of land of each category to the total cultivated area, or, what amounts to the same thing, the distribution of all expended capital among different land categories. Up to now this circumstance has been strangely completely overlooked. In any case it appears, and this is important for the further course of our investigation, that the relative height of average rent per acre and the average rate of rent, or the relation of the total sum of rent to all capital invested in land, can increase or decrease simply as a result of extensive expansion of the cultivated area with unchanged prices, unchanged differences in fertility of cultivated land plots, and unchanged rent per acre, or rate of rent on capital expended per acre for each actually rent-bearing land category, that is, for all capital actually bearing rent.

[222] ...The process of expansion of cultivated land in general is accomplished either through transition to worse land or among the different existing categories of land in different proportions depending on what is available. Transition to worse land certainly never occurs willingly, but can only—assuming capitalist mode of production—be a consequence of rising prices, and under any mode of production only a result of necessity. But this has no absolute significance. Worse land is preferred to relatively better land as a consequence of its location, which is decisive in any expansion of cultivated area in young countries; furthermore, because although the land of a certain region as a whole belongs to the more fertile, nevertheless there are found in places lands of better and worse quality, and worse land must be cultivated already for the sole reason that it is in immediate proximity to the better. If worse land wedges in as separate plots among better, then proximity to the latter creates an advantage for the worse land compared to more fertile land not adjoining the cultivated or to-be-cultivated land.

[223] The entire population of such a state as, for example, Michigan, was occupied initially almost exclusively in agriculture and specifically in mass products of it, since only these could be exchanged for industrial goods and products from the tropics. Its entire surplus product therefore—exclusively grain. This already primarily distinguishes colonies founded on the basis of the modern world market from earlier ones and especially from colonies of the ancient world. Modern colonies receive through the intermediary of the world market ready-made those products which under other circumstances they would have had to manufacture themselves, such as: clothing, tools, etc. Only on such a basis could the southern states of the Union make cotton their principal product. The division of labor on the world market gives them this possibility. Therefore if...

It seems that they, taking into account their youth and the
relative smallness of their population, produce a very large
surplus product—but they owe this not to the fertility
of their soil nor to the productiveness of labour of the people living in them,
but to the one-sided form of their labour, and consequently to the one-sided form of the
surplus product in which this labour is represented⁸⁹.
In less fertile regions of this kind, the surplus is obtained not thanks to
high soil fertility, that is, not thanks to a high yield per acre, but thanks
to large areas which can be subjected to superficial cultivation, since this
land itself costs the cultivator either nothing or, compared to old countries,
extremely cheaply. For example, there where share-cropping exists, as in
certain districts of the states of New York, Michigan, and in Canada, etc. One
family cultivates, let us say, 100 acres, and although the quantity of product
obtained per acre is small,
from 100 acres this yields a considerable surplus for sale.
To this is added the almost free maintenance of livestock on natural pastures,
without artificial meadows. Here decisive importance lies not in quality but in
quantity of land. The possibility of such superficial cultivation naturally becomes
NB ( exhausted over time—the more slowly, the more fertile the new land, and the more
quickly, the greater the export of its product.
[227—228] Therefore in countries of intensive culture (and in the economic sense,
by intensive culture we understand nothing other than the concentration of capital
on the same piece of land, instead of its distribution among land parcels lying
one beside another) the work of the appraiser, as Morton shows in his work
"Resources of Estates"⁹⁰, becomes a very important, complex, and difficult
profession.
[229] Further, in virtue of the natural laws of agriculture at a certain height
of culture and the corresponding exhaustion of the
soil, capital, understood here also in the sense of already-produced means
of production, becomes the decisive element of agriculture.... The capitalist mode
of production only slowly and unevenly seizes hold of agriculture, as one can
observe in England, the classical country of the capitalist mode of production
in the sphere of agriculture.

[232] The product from land D would now be = 4 + 1 + 3 + 2 = 10
quarters, whereas formerly it was equal to 4 quarters. But
the price of a quarter, regulated by the price of production on land B,
would have decreased to 1½ pounds sterling. The difference between
[products of lands] D and B would be = 10 − 2 = 8 quarters,
which at 1½ £ per quarter would amount to 12 £, whereas the monetary rent
from land D previously was = 9 pounds sterling. This should be noted. If the calculation
is made per acre, rent rose by 33⅓ %, despite the diminished rate
of surplus profit from the two additional capitals of 2½ £ each.
From this one can see what extraordinarily complex combinations
differential rent generally can produce, and especially in form
II together with form I, whereas Ricardo, for example, treats
it in a completely one-sided way and as a simple matter. There are
cases, like the one cited above, when there occurs a lowering of the regulating
market price and at the same time an increase in rent on fertile
lands, so that both the absolute product and the absolute
surplus product increase.
[233—234] When, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, agriculture
in England became even more intensive, a mass of land on which
wheat was previously cultivated was put to other uses, namely converted into pastures;
on the contrary, the fertile lands most suitable for wheat cultivation
were drained and otherwise improved; capital applied to wheat
cultivation was concentrated on a comparatively smaller area of land.
In this case—and all possible rates of surplus profit
lying between the greatest quantity of surplus product of the best land and the
quantity of product from land A, which brings no rent, correspond here not to relative,
but to absolute increase of surplus product per acre—
the newly-formed surplus profit (potential rent) represents not a transformed-into-rent part
of the former average profit (the part of the product in which average
profit was formerly represented), but additional surplus profit,
which from this form transforms into rent.
On the contrary, only if demand for grain increased so much that
the market price exceeded the price of production on land A and therefore
the surplus product from lands A, B, or any other category of land could
only be obtained at a price higher than 3 £—only in this case would
the reduction of product from additional
outlay of capital on any one of lands A, B, C, D be

bound up with a rise in the price of production and the regulating
market price. Insofar as such a situation became established for a comparatively
protracted time and did not lead to the cultivation of additional land A
(at least land of such quality as land A) and generally no other influences
led to the supply of grain at cheaper prices, wages under otherwise equal conditions
would rise owing to the dearness of grain, and correspondingly
the rate of profit would fall. In this case it would be a matter of indifference whether
the increased demand were satisfied by bringing into cultivation
land of worse quality than land A, or by additional
outlay of capital, it makes no difference on which of the four categories
of land. Differential rent would begin to rise in connection with a fall in the
rate of profit.
This one case, where the diminishing productivity of capitals
additionally invested in already-developed lands can lead to a rise in the
price of production, a fall in the rate of profit, and the formation of a higher differential
rent—since the latter under given conditions would rise on all
categories of land in exactly the same way as if land worse than A
were now regulating the market price—this case Ricardo transforms
into the sole case, into the normal case, to which he reduces all formation
of differential rent II.
[238] ...With unchanged price of production, unchanged rate of profit,
and unchanged differences [between products of various lands] (and therefore
with unchanged rate of surplus profit or rent, taken in its relation to capital),
the height of rent, expressed in product and in money
obtained per acre, and consequently the price of land can rise.
The same thing can occur with diminishing rates of surplus profit,
and therefore of rent, that is, with diminishing productivity of additional
outlays of capital, still bringing rent. If secondary outlays
of capital of 2½ £ had not yielded double the product, but on land
B only 3½ quarters were obtained, on land C—5, and on land
D—7 quarters, then differential rent on land B
for the second outlay of capital of 2½ £ would equal only
½ quarter instead of 1, on land C—1 quarter instead of 2, and on land
D—2 quarters instead of 3. The relation between rent and
capital for both successive outlays would be as follows:

First outlay                Second outlay
B: rent 3 £, capital 2½ £    Rent 1½ £, capital 2½ £
C:   "   6  "    "    "   "       "    3    "   "      "     2½  "
D:   "   9  "    "    "   "       "    "    "   "      "      "

[239] II. Additional capitals produce on lands of all categories additional
products proportionally to the magnitude of these capitals, that is, production
increases depending on the specific fertility of the soil of each category,
proportionally to the magnitude of the additional capital. In Chapter XXXIX
we took the following table I⁹¹ as our point of departure:

Category    Capital    Profit    Price of        Product      Selling    Product    Grain      Monetary
of land      £          £      production        quarters      price       £         rent       rent
                                   £                           £                    quarters      £

A          2½        ½         3           1          3          3            —          —
B          2½        1         3           2          3          6            1          3
C          2½        1         3           4          3         12            2          6
D          2½        1         3           4          3         12            3          9

Total      10         4        —          —          —         33           —         18

Form of surplus 
profit
—
120%
240%
360%*

Translation from: German
First published incompletely
in the book: V. I. Lenin.
"Preparatory Materials
for the book 'The Development of Capitalism
in Russia'"

* 3 £?

¹ In the present collection, for the first time, V. I. Lenin's annotations to Volumes I, II, and III of Karl Marx's "Capital" are reproduced in full. Marx worked on these works throughout his life. From memoirs of relatives and testimony of those who knew Lenin closely in his youth, it is known that he began studying "Capital" in 1888 in Kazan and continued in Samara. In the Samara period, Volumes I and II of "Capital" were the reference books of the young Lenin. Using "Capital," he conducted classes for participants in the first Marxist circle. Lenin studied Volume III of "Capital" in Petersburg. N. K. Krupskaya writes in her memoirs that Vladimir Ilyich "approached Marx as a man seeking answers to agonizing pressing questions. [He] found those answers there. With them he went to the workers." Lenin constantly turned to the works of K. Marx, as he said, "consulted" with Marx when working out the strategy and tactics of the revolutionary struggle, the program of socialist transformation of society. Approaching the study of "Capital" creatively, he developed the most important theoretical problems of Marx's economic doctrine and applied them concretely to the economy of Russia.

In early 1958, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism received Volumes I, II, and III of "Capital" in German and Russian editions from Lenin's personal library in the Kremlin. Russian editions of "Capital"—Vol. I, 1872; Vol. II, 1885; German editions of "Capital"—Vol. I, Hamburg, 1872; Vol. II, Hamburg, 1885; Vol. III, Hamburg, 1894 (the first and second parts of this volume, published separately, are bound together in one book). The books bear annotations and underlinings testifying to careful study of the material. Lenin's annotations and remarks were made in different pencils and inks at different times. On the half-title of Volume II (German edition) there is an inscription: "From the books of V. Ulyanov."

In his works: "What Are the 'Friends of the People' and How Do They Fight Against the Social-Democrats?," "The Economic Content of Populism and Its Critique in the Book by Mr. Struve (A Reflection of Marxism in Bourgeois Literature)," "An Explanation of the Law on Fines Levied from Workers in Factories and Mills," "The New Factory Law," "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," "On Strikes," "Karl Marx (A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism)," "Philosophical Notebooks," and others—Lenin examines individual propositions from Marx's "Capital," using editions from 1872, 1885, and 1894. Lenin repeatedly cites "Capital" in his own translation from German, at the same time pointing in a number of cases to inaccuracies in the Russian editions' translation.

There is evidence of Lenin's participation in the translation into Russian of the 3rd German edition and in the editing of the translation jointly with I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov of Volume II of "Capital," published in 1907. In an announcement by the "Moscow Publishing House" about the appearance of all three volumes of "Capital" in Russian, printed on the cover of Volume I of "Capital" in 1909, Lenin's participation in the translation work is indicated; this announcement is also confirmed by an article on translations of "Capital" into Russian published in Volume VIII of the journal "Russkaya mysl'" for 1908.

Lenin's verbal annotations are reproduced in bold type; underlining and marginal marking are given by straight or wavy lines, depending on how he did it in the text and margins of Volumes I, II, and III of "Capital."

² Marx began systematic studies of political economy at the end of 1843 in Paris. Studying economic literature, he set himself the goal of writing a large work containing a critique of the existing order and bourgeois political economy. In August 1849, after the defeat of the 1848—1849 revolution, Marx was forced to emigrate to London, where he continued his economic research. He studied deeply and comprehensively the history of political economy and contemporary economics of different countries, especially England, which at that time was the classical country of capitalism, the history of landed property and the theory of land rent, the history and theory of monetary circulation and prices, economic crises, the history of technology and technology, questions of agronomy and agrochemistry. By 1857 he had managed to conduct enormous preparatory work which allowed him to proceed to the final stage of research—systematization and generalization of the collected materials. From August 1857 to June 1858 Marx creates a manuscript of about 50 printed sheets, which served as a kind of rough draft of the future "Capital." Compiling summaries and monographic studies on individual questions of political economy, Marx did not yet intend them for publication. These were materials for "clarifying questions to himself" (K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 13, p. 5).

However, in 1858 Marx decided to publish his economic research in separate installments. The first installment was published in 1859 under the title "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Masterfully using the method of materialist dialectics, he revealed the dual character of the commodity and the contradiction between use-value and value of the commodity, showed the further manifestation and development of this contradiction in the analysis of relations between commodity and money, emphasized that political economy deals not with things but with relations between people and ultimately with relations between classes. The work also pursued polemical aims—to utterly refute "the Proudhonian socialism now fashionable in France" (ibid., Vol. 29, p. 469).

Continuing his studies of political economy with some interruptions, Marx from August 1861 to the middle of September 1863 writes a work of about 200 printed sheets comprising 23 notebooks, which is entitled, like the book, "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." In it, in its main features, all the most important themes of the future "Capital" are worked out.

Perfecting his work, he creates over the course of two and a half years (from August 1863 to the end of 1865) a new enormous manuscript, which constitutes the first detailed variant of the three theoretical volumes of "Capital." And only after the entire work was written—in January 1866, did Marx, on Engels's advice, decide to prepare for publication first and foremost Volume I of "Capital."

The first volume in German was published in Hamburg on September 14, 1867 with a volume of [blank] printed sheets and a print run of [blank] copies. On the title page of the book was written: "Dedicated to my unforgettable friend, the brave, faithful, noble, advanced fighter of the proletariat Wilhelm Wolff. Born in Tarnau June 21, 1809. Died in exile in Manchester May 9, 1864." The final preparation of the manuscript of the first volume was carried out by Marx with great care and, essentially, was another reworking of the volume.

In the 1870s the demand for Volume I of "Capital" among German workers increased, and the print run of the first edition was sold out by autumn 1871. This prompted the publisher to propose to Marx that he prepare and carry out in a short time a second German edition of "Capital." He worked on the preparation of the second edition for a year and a half (from December 1871 to April 1873), made significant changes to both the structure and the substance of the presentation, made partial changes to the text, sometimes purely stylistic. The edition was cheap, coming out in separate installments. Printing of the book began in March 1872 in Hamburg. In the middle of July, the first installment of the second edition with a volume of five printed sheets came out of print. The last, ninth installment was printed and sent to the author at the end of April 1873. Volume I of "Capital" of the second German edition was published with a print run of 3,000 copies. V. I. Lenin used this edition in his work. On the half-title of the book, in the hand of A. I. Ulyanova-Elizarova, is written: "To Vladimir Ulyanov."

Over the last 15 years of his life, Marx repeatedly returns to the manuscripts of 1863—1865, creating new variants of individual parts, expanding the range of literature studied, studying masses of books on questions dealt with in the subsequent volumes of "Capital." He thoroughly investigated agrarian relations in different countries and new phenomena in capitalist economy, and began studying communal land ownership in Russia. On October 7, 1868, in a letter to N. F. Danielson, Marx wrote that he could not prepare the second volume for publication "until certain official investigations undertaken during the last and 1866 in France, the United States and England are brought to completion, or until the data of these investigations are published" (K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 32, p. 469).

At the end of 1869 he undertook to study the Russian language and within a year mastered it. In the 1870s Marx devotes enormous attention to the economy of Russia, especially its post-Reform development. "For several years," Engels wrote, "he studied in the originals the statistical handbooks and other publications on land ownership which became inevitable in Russia after the 'Reform' of 1861, provided to him by Russian friends with desired completeness, made extracts from them and intended to use them in a new reworking of this section. Thanks to the diversity of forms of land ownership and exploitation of agricultural producers in Russia, Russia was to play in the section on land rent the same role that England played in Book I in the investigation of industrial wage-labor" (ibid., Vol. 25, Part I, p. 10). In Russian he studied official publications and monographic literature on agrarian relations and the socio-political development of Russia. One of the first works he read in Russian was N. Flerovsky's book "The Condition of the Working Class in Russia." Along with Russian sources, Marx continued to study world economic literature on the history of trade, credit and banks, on the agrarian question in Ireland, read a number of books on the land system and economy of India and Australia, and devoted much attention to American land relations.

In the process of working on "Capital," Marx constantly consulted with Engels and heeded his opinion. He sent him for review all clean pages of the first volume, on which Engels made corrections, annotations, and sometimes additions. Shortly before his death, Marx asked his daughter Eleanor to hand over the manuscripts of the second book of "Capital" to Engels, who was supposed to "do something" with them (ibid., Vol. 24, p. 9). By right and duty as his nearest friend and literary executor, Engels immediately set about preparing the remaining materials for publication. He divided the author's manuscript of the second volume into two independent volumes—II and III. In his work, Engels tried to do everything "exclusively in the spirit of the author," limiting his work as much as possible to "a simple selection among various redactions" (ibid.). In reality, the work done by Engels, especially on the third volume, was so significant that Volumes II and III of "Capital" published under his editorship could be considered, as V. I. Lenin pointed out in his obituary article "Friedrich Engels," the work of two—Marx and Engels (see Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 12).

The part of the manuscript of the second volume prepared for publication required changes in accordance with Marx's later formulations and research. The bulk of the material was not processed stylistically. From eight manuscripts written in different years, a single variant of the text had to be created. Engels edited Volume II of "Capital" for more than two years. It came out of print in 1885 in Hamburg.

Enormous work was done by Engels on Volume III of "Capital." He gave it its final structure, annotated individual chapters, wrote numerous insertions for connecting fragmentary texts on the basis of the author's available notes, created the text of the fourth chapter, reworked the fifth section three times, wrote the preface and supplement to the volume ("The Law of Value and the Rate of Profit" and "The Stock Exchange"). All of Engels's work on the third volume lasted about ten years. It came out of print in 1894.

In the preface to the second volume, Engels specially noted Marx's wish to dedicate the second and third books of "Capital" to his wife—Jenny Marx.

The appearance of "Capital" was of great significance in the victory of the ideas of scientific communism over petty-bourgeois socialist theories and doctrines, over Lassalleanism in Germany, Proudhonism and anarchism in Romance-language countries, reformism in England and the USA, in the debunking of reformist illusions and pseudo-revolutionary phraseology of petty-bourgeois theoreticians.

To refute Populism and "legal Marxism," to substantiate the Marxist view of the prospects of revolution in Russia, V. I. Lenin used the most important works of Marx and Engels, and above all "Capital."

³ The Currency theory reviewed; in a letter to the Scottish people. By a banker in England. Edinburgh, 1845, p. 29, 30.

⁴ On pp. 806—807 of the first volume of the second German edition of "Capital" additional notes to the first volume are printed, among which there is a supplement to the present note. In Volume 23 of the second edition of the Works of K. Marx and F. Engels, this text is printed on pp. 263—264.

"The Workman's Advocate"—a newspaper published in London from September 9, 1865 to February 3, 1866.

⁵ It refers to the supplement printed on page 806 of the first volume of the second German edition of "Capital," in which a clarification of the second sentence in this text is given. In the Russian edition of "Capital," this supplement was not printed, since the proposed clarification was taken into account in the translation.

⁶ G. Berkeley. The Querist, containing several queries, proposed to the consideration of the public. London, 1750, § 521, p. 56.

⁷ V. I. Lenin refers to this proposition of K. Marx in his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," characterizing the significance of "capitalist simple cooperation in the development of capitalist forms of industry" (Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 356—357).

⁸ "Disjecta membra poetae"—words from the satires of Horace, Book One, Satire 4.

⁹ V. I. Lenin refers to this proposition of K. Marx in his article "The 1894/95 Craft Census in Perm Province and General Questions of 'Craft' Industry" and in the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" when characterizing the manufacturing period. Noting that this period in Western Europe was distinguished by the widespread development of work at home, he cites the description of watch manufacturing "as a classical example of manufacture" (Collected Works, Vol. 2, pp. 396 and Vol. 3, pp. 398, 441).

¹⁰ Th. Hodgskin. Labour defended against the claims of capital; or, the Unproductiveness of capital proved. With reference to the present combinations amongst journeymen. By a labourer. London, 1825, p. 25.

¹¹ V. I. Lenin cites this proposition of K. Marx in the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia," characterizing the significance of manufacture in the development of capitalist forms of industry as an intermediate link between craft and small commodity production with primitive forms of capital and large machine industry (factory) (see Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 385).

¹² James Watt—an outstanding English inventor who lived in the 18th—early 19th century; constructed a universal steam engine.

¹³ Reports of the inspectors of factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department for the half year ending 30th April 1860. London, 1860, p. 36.

¹⁴ Reports of the inspectors of factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department for the half year ending 31st October 1856. London, 1857, p. 16.

Mule-machine—a spinning machine that produces from roving the final product of spinning production—yarn. The purpose of the mule-machine is to stretch the weakly-twisted roving thread to a certain count, give it the required strength by twisting, and wind the resulting yarn onto paper tubes or bobbins for convenience of handling in subsequent processing.

Jacques de Vaucanson—a French mechanic who lived in the 18th century; improved the design of looms; inventor of ingenious automatic toys.

Richard Arkwright—an English entrepreneur who lived in the 18th century; appropriated a number of patents for others' inventions made in England.

¹⁶ Charles Fourier—the great French utopian socialist; lived in the late 18th—first half of the 19th century.

¹⁷ Pindar—a lyric poet of ancient Greece who celebrated distinguished victors in athletic contests in his verses. The name of Pindar became proverbial for excessive "praiser." Marx calls Doctor Ure the Pindar of the capitalist factory.

This example from "Capital," V. I. Lenin cites in his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." Examining the significance of machines in agriculture, he writes: "Agricultural capitalism in Russia has managed to create not only 'agricultural factories' but also 'Pindars' of these factories" (Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 228).

¹⁸ This refers to the book: A. Ure. The Philosophy of manufactures, or, an Exposition of the scientific, moral, and commercial economy of the factory system of Great Britain. London, 1835.

¹⁹ See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 4, pp. 159—160.

²⁰ This refers to pages of the book: F. Engels. "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844," published in New York in 1887 (see also K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 405—406).

²¹ P. Ravenstone. Thoughts on the funding system, and its effects. London, 1824, p. 45.

²² Reports of the inspectors of factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department for the half year ending 31st October 1856. London, 1857, p. 16.

²³ This refers to page 808 of the German edition of Volume I of "Capital." On pages 808 and 809, a summary of statistical data on imports to and exports from Great Britain of grain and flour for the period from 1831 to 1866 was placed. The data of the summary were taken by K. Marx from a parliamentary document: "Corn, Grain and Meal. Return to an Order of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 18 February 1867." In subsequent editions of "Capital," the summary of statistical data was included in the main text (see K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 23, pp. 462—463).

²⁴ In the fourth edition of Volume I of "Capital" in German, published in 1890, F. Engels made several additions to the text, taking them from the French edition, which K. Marx himself worked on translating in 1872—1875. Evaluating the French translation of "Capital," Marx wrote in the postface to it that the translation was made conscientiously, but in a number of places he changed the wording to make it more accessible to readers, provided additional historical and statistical material. He believed that the French edition "has independent scientific value alongside the original, and therefore should be used by readers familiar with the German language as well" (K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., Vol. 23, p. 26). In addition to additions from the French edition and Marx's manuscript notes, Engels in the fourth edition made several additional explanatory notes which were necessary in connection with changed historical conditions. All these additional notes were enclosed in square brackets and signed with his initials (in the second edition of the Works of K. Marx and F. Engels, square brackets were replaced by curly braces). Thus, to footnote 234, Engels added: "{In the 4th edition. 'Since that time they have developed to the position of the second industrial country of the world, though they have not yet completely lost their colonial character.' — F. E.}" (ibid., p. 462).

²⁵ Children's employment commission (1862). Report (I—VI) of the commissioners. Second report. London, 1864, p. LXVIII, No. 415.

²⁶ Public Health. Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. Fourth Report. 1861. With appendix. Ordered, by the House of Commons, to be printed, 11 April 1862. Sixth Report. With appendix. 1863. London, 1864.

²⁷ Public Health. Reports of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. Sixth Report. With appendix. 1863. London, 1864, p. 30.

John Simon—an English physician, medical inspector to the Privy Council, lived in the 19th—early 20th century; edited the reports "Public Health."

²⁸ "Children's employment commission. Third report," pp. XI, XIX, Nos. 125—130; p. 52, No. [blank]; pp. 113—114, No. 487; p. 137, No. 674.

²⁹ Truck-system—a system of paying workers in goods and products from factory shops belonging to manufacturers. Employers compel workers instead of monetary wages to take in these shops items of poor quality at high prices. This system, which is an additional means of exploiting workers, was particularly widespread in Russia in regions of craft industries.

³⁰ Children's employment commission (1862). Report (I—VI) of the commissioners. First report. London, 1863, p. 185.

³¹ Children's employment commission (1862). Report (I—VI) of the commissioners. Second report. London, 1864, p. XLVII, No. 319.

White—a member of the commission investigating the conditions of child labor.

³² Registrar General—the title of an English official who headed the Central Bureau of Registration of Civil Acts. In addition to its usual functions, the bureau conducted a census of the population once every 10 years.

"The Times" ("Times")—a daily newspaper founded in 1785 in London; one of the largest conservative newspapers of English bourgeoisie.

³³ Children's employment commission (1862). Report (I—VI) of the commissioners. Second report. London, 1864.

³⁴ "Children's employment commission. Second report," 1864, p. 84, No. 124.

³⁵ V. I. Lenin develops this proposition of K. Marx when characterizing large machine industry in Chapter VII of the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" (see Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 455).

Highlighting Marx's proposition on the transition of a number of productions in England from manufacture, craft, and work at home to factory production, Lenin twice underlines the words "at the present time" and puts them in the margin, thereby drawing particular attention to the interconnection of the stages of capitalist development indicated by Marx, to their coexistence in time.

Lenin uses the noted proposition in his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" when analyzing the stages and forms of evolution of capitalism in industrial post-Reform Russia (see ibid., Vol. 3, p. 542).

³⁶ This refers to the parliamentary document: "Factories. Return to an Address of the Honourable the House of Commons, dated 24 April 1861," p. 9.

³⁷ V. I. Lenin refers to this proposition of K. Marx in the book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia." "Not one of the Populists," he wrote, "even noticed the trifle that home workers constitute perhaps the largest part of our 'reserve army' of capitalism....

This error of the Populists is all the grosser because the majority of them wish to follow the theory of Marx, who in the most decisive terms stressed the capitalist character of 'contemporary home work' and specially pointed out that these home workers constitute one of the forms of relative overpopulation inherent in capitalism..." (Collected Works, Vol. 3, p. 446).

³⁸ Reports of the inspectors of factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department for the half year ending 31st October 1865. London, 1866, p. 129.

³⁹ V. I. Lenin cites this proposition in the article "Karl Marx (A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism)," in the section "Socialism" (see Collected Works, Vol. 26, p. 74).

⁴⁰ John Ramsay McCulloch—an English bourgeois economist, a vulgarizer of Ricardo's economic doctrine, a fierce apologist for capitalism; lived in the late 18th—19th century.

⁴¹ David Ricardo—an English economist, one of the greatest representatives of classical bourgeois political economy; lived in the last quarter of the 18th—first quarter of the 19th century.

Jean Baptiste Say—a French vulgar bourgeois economist, lived in the late 18th—first half of the 19th century.

Adam Smith—an English economist, one of the greatest representatives of classical bourgeois political economy; lived in the 18th century.

⁴² The census data from 1851—1861 are taken from the book: "Census of England and Wales for 1861." London, 1863, Vol. III, pp. 35—39.

Analyzing the census materials for England and Wales, K. Marx made a calculation of the number of persons engaged in agriculture in 1851 and 1861.

Calculation of the number of persons engaged in various branches of industry and the percentage growth of the working class over 10 years was made in the margins of Volume I of "Capital" by V. I. Lenin.

On the basis of such calculations, Lenin in his book "The Development of Capitalism in Russia" concluded about the growing concentration of the proletariat in industry, which contributed to the cohesion and organization of the working class, increased its strength and political role in the life of the country.

⁴³ J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi. Nouveaux principes d'economie politique, ou De la richesse dans ses rapports avec la population. Seconde edition. Tome II. Paris, 1827, p. 434.

⁴⁴ V. I. Lenin refers to this proposition of K. Marx in his work "What Are the 'Friends of the People' and How Do They Fight Against the Social-Democrats? (Reply to Articles of 'Russian Wealth' Against the Marxists)," in the "Draft Program of Our Party," when characterizing the basic processes of capitalist development in Russia, and in the article "New Events and Old Questions." In the latter work, characterizing the speeches of Nizhny Novgorod workers—P. A. Zalomov, A. I. Bykov, M. I. Samylin, and G. E. Mikhailo, prosecuted for participation in demonstrations on May 1 and 5 (14 and 18), 1902, Lenin writes: "...These are those very famous words of Marx from the last pages of the first volume of 'Capital,' which have provoked from 'critics,' opportunists, revisionists, etc., so many noisy and unsuccessful attempts at refutation and at exposing the social-democrats for telling lies" (Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 63).

⁴⁵ The first volume of "Capital" in Russian was published during Marx's lifetime in 1872 in Petersburg in the edition of N. P. Polyakov. In September 1868, N. F. Danielson, a revolutionary Populist and subsequently a prominent figure of liberal Populism, entered into correspondence with K. Marx regarding the publication of "Capital" in Russian. "The significance of Your latest work—'Capital. A Critique of Political Economy,'" he wrote, "has prompted one of our local publishers (N. P. Polyakov) to undertake a translation of this work into the Russian language" ("K. Marx, F. Engels and Revolutionary Russia." Moscow, 1967, p. 158).

Among the initiators of translating "Capital" into Russian, G. A. Lopatin, a follower of N. G. Chernyshevsky, played a prominent role. In 1870 he came to London especially to meet Marx, who received him in early July. Soon they became friends. Marx and Lopatin repeatedly discussed questions connected with the implementation of the Russian edition of Volume I of "Capital." At Lopatin's request, Marx intended to rework for this edition the first chapter ("Commodity and Money") to make it more popular. Having begun the translation on Marx's advice from the second chapter ("The Transformation of Money into Capital") and having managed to translate, in addition to it, the third ("Production of Absolute Surplus-Value") and incompletely the fourth ("Production of Relative Surplus-Value") chapters, i.e., roughly one-third of the book, Lopatin at the end of November 1870 interrupted his work and departed to Russia to organize the escape of N. G. Chernyshevsky from Siberian exile. In Siberia, Lopatin was arrested and only managed to escape confinement in the summer of 1873. N. F. Danielson completed the translation work on "Capital" with the participation of N. N. Lyubavovich, subsequently a professor of chemistry at Moscow University. The first chapter was translated in unrevised form. Marx could not fulfill his promise owing to being very busy, but he made a number of corrections and additions to this and other chapters.

The printing of the Russian translation of Volume I of "Capital" was completed on March 27, 1872. The print run of the book was 3,000 copies. By the end of the year, almost the entire print run was sold. Marx's name acquired special popularity in Russia precisely after the appearance of the Russian edition of Volume I of "Capital." The Russian translation was the first foreign translation of this brilliant work of Marxism. Marx spoke very highly of its quality. In the translation of N. F. Danielson, Volumes II and III of "Capital" also came out in Petersburg in 1885 and 1896.

⁴⁶ N. Barbon. A Discourse concerning coining the new money lighter. In Answer to Mr. Lock's considerations about raising the value of money. London, 1696.

⁴⁷ An unsuccessful translation of this text by K. Marx was later corrected. In the second edition of the Works of K. Marx and F. Engels it is given as: "At the same time, the commodity as a use-value falls out of the sphere of circulation and passes into the sphere of consumption. Its place is taken by the form of value of the commodity, or its monetary mask" (Vol. 23, p. 126).

⁴⁸ P. P. Mercier de la Rivière. L'ordre naturel et essentiel des societes politiques. In: Phisiocrates. Avec une introduction et des commentaires par E. Daire. Partie II, Paris, 1846, p. 573, 486.

⁴⁹ Athenaeus. Table Talk of the Learned, in fifteen books. Vol. II. Schweighauser edition. Strasbourg, 1802, p. 397.

⁵⁰ Report addressed to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, relative to the grievances complained of by the journeymen bakers; with appendix of evidence. London, 1862.

Hugh Seymour Tremenheere—an English official and publicist; lived in the 19th century. He repeatedly served on government commissions investigating the conditions of workers' labor.

⁵¹ A. H. Hassall. Adulterations detected or Plain instructions for the discovery of frauds in food and medicine. Second edition. London, 1861.

[FOOTNOTES AND EDITORIAL ANNOTATIONS]

52 V. I. Lenin cites this proposition from K. Marx in his "Speech at the First All-Russian Congress of Workers in Education and Socialist Culture, July 31, 1919." Analyzing the position of teachers closely linked with workers and toiling peasants following the Great October Socialist Revolution, and their struggle to overcome old bourgeois prejudices, Lenin provides an example of how Marx, in approaching an analysis of capitalist exploitation, accompanies his introduction with an ironic remark: "Here, where I shall lead you, into this place of squeezing out profit by capitalists, here freedom, equality, and Bentham hold sway." Clarifying these sarcasm-laden words, Lenin writes: "When Marx said this, he was emphasizing the ideology of the bourgeoisie, which it carries out in capitalist society, which it justifies, because from the point of view of the bourgeoisie, which has overcome the struggle against the feudal lord, from the point of view of this bourgeoisie, in capitalist society founded on the domination of capital, on the domination of money, on the exploitation of the toiling masses, there indeed holds sway 'freedom, equality, and Bentham.' Freedom, which they call the freedom to profiteer, the freedom to enrich themselves for the few, the freedom of commercial circulation; equality, which they call the equality of capitalists and workers; the domination of Bentham, that is, petty-bourgeois prejudices concerning freedom and equality" (Complete Works, vol. 39, pp. 132–133).
Lenin also cites this proposition from Marx in the work "On the Struggle Within the Italian Socialist Party" to characterize the bourgeois press and the press of petty-bourgeois democrats who come forward with criticism of the Bolsheviks "for violating freedom and equality" (ibid., vol. 41, p. 424).

Jeremy Bentham — English jurist and philosopher, ideologue of bourgeois liberalism; lived in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. According to his teachings, society constitutes an aggregate of individuals linked only by the striving for their own advantage.

53 G. W. F. Hegel. Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse. Theil I. Die Logik. Werke. Band VI. Berlin, 1840, p. 382 (G. W. F. Hegel. Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. Part I. Logic. Works. Vol. VI. Berlin, 1840, p. 382).

54 Reports of the inspectors of factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department for the half year ending 31st October, 1846. London, 1847, p. 20.

55 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel — the greatest representative of German classical philosophy, an objective idealist who comprehensively developed idealist dialectics. Lived in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century.

56 After K. Marx's death on March 14, 1883, F. Engels prepared and published by the end of that year the third edition of Volume I of "Capital" in German. In his preface to this edition (see K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 23, pp. 27–29), Engels wrote that he took into account all the insertions and additions that Marx had made during his lifetime, without changing "a single word unless he was fully convinced that the author himself would have changed it." He also made certain additions to the text and footnotes, signing them with his initials. In particular, this note was expanded with significant explanatory text (see ibid., pp. 318–319).

Auguste Laurent — French chemist; lived in the nineteenth century.
Charles Frédéric Gerhardt — an outstanding French chemist.

57 An unsuccessful translation of this proposition by K. Marx was later corrected. In the second edition of the Works of K. Marx and F. Engels it is translated as follows: "The immeasurable prolongation of the working day, which machinery in the hands of capital brings about, leads subsequently, as we have seen, to a reaction on the part of society, whose vital roots are threatened with danger, and thereby to the establishment of a legislatively limited normal working day" (vol. 23, p. 420).

58 The present table characterizes the development of textile exports from Great Britain from 1848 to 1865. Despite the fact that limitations on the length of the working day were imposed, capital, systematically raising the degree of intensity of labor and transforming every improvement in machinery into a means of intensified sucking of labor power, intensified the exploitation of the working class during this period.

59 Alexander Redgrave — factory inspector in England.

60 A. Cherbuliez. Richesse ou pauvreté. Exposition des causes et des effets de la distribution actuelle des richesses sociales. Paris, 1841, p. 58.

61 V. I. Lenin cites this proposition from K. Marx in the article "The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart" to characterize the European workers' movement, and in the article "Imperialism and the Split in Socialism" in analyzing the colonial policy of imperialism (see Complete Works, vol. 16, p. 69 and vol. 30, p. 165).

J. B. Say. Traité d'économie politique. Cinquième édition. Tome I. Paris, 1826.

J. C. L. Simonde de Sismondi. Études sur l'économie politique. Tome I. Bruxelles, 1837, p. 24.

62 Gianmaria Ortes — Italian economist, author of a number of works significant and original for his time; lived in the eighteenth century.

G. Ortes. Della economia nazionale. Libri sei. In: Scrittori classici italiani di economia politica. Parte moderna. Tomi XXI–XXII. Milano, 1804, pp. 6, 9, 22, 25, 32.

63 Joseph Townsend — English clergyman, geologist, and sociologist; lived in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. He propagated an unscientific theory of population, later borrowed by Malthus.

J. Townsend. A Dissertation on the poor laws. By a wellwisher to mankind. London, 1786. Republished 1817, p. 15.

64 Th. B. Macaulay. The History of England from the accession of James the Second. Volume I. Tenth edition. London, 1854, p. 413.

Thomas Babington Macaulay — English bourgeois historian and political figure, member of parliament from the Labour Party; lived in the first half of the nineteenth century.

65 In a marginal note, V. I. Lenin draws attention to an inaccuracy in the translation. The German term "Arbeitsprozesses" is translated into Russian as...
